Bio-Orchestration of Cellular Organization and Human-Preferred Sensory Texture in Cultured Meat
Sung-Won Jung, Bumgyu Choi, Milae Lee, Sohyeon Park, Woojin Choi, Hyungseok Yong, Sung-eun Heo, Yeseul Park, Jeong Min Lee, Seung‐Tae Lee, Heeyoun Hwang, Jae‐Sung Kwon, Won‐Gun Koh, Jinkee Hong
Abstract
For cultured meat to effectively replace traditional meat, it is essential to develop scaffolds that replicate key attributes of real meat, such as taste, nutrition, flavor, and texture. However, one of the significant challenges in replicating meat characteristics with scaffolds lies in the considerable gap between the stiffness preferred by cells and the textural properties desired by humans. To address this issue, we focused on the microscale environment conducive to cell growth and the macro-scale properties favored by humans. This led to the development of the adaptive bio-orchestrating anisotropic scaffold (ABS), which satisfies both cellular and human requirements. The ABS is produced using the anisotropic freeze-initiated ion coordination method, which sequentially aligns and enhances the fibril structure of food-derived proteins, effectively bridging the gap between cellular and culinary perspectives. Notably, the microenvironments of the ABS exhibited exceptional myoblast cell differentiation, with macro-scale 3D mechanical textures that are consistent regardless of the chewing direction, due to the aligned fibril and cell structure. The ABS containing bovine myotubes demonstrated a mechanical texture nearly identical to that of beef sirloins.