Talk:CH391L/S13/Synthetic Meats and Organs

• Gabriel Wu 17:51, 25 March 2013 (EDT): As part of the motivation for "shmeat", it's fair to outline the specific controversies with real meat. A little time line might be neat. Things to include can be Sinclair's Jungle, taco bell beef controversy, IKEA horse controversy, and the PETA prize awards.
  • Siddharth Das 7:10, 1 April 2013 (EDT): Will do!

• Kevin Baldridge 17:51, 25 March 2013 (EDT):Do synthetic meats have to be exercised?
  • Siddharth Das 7:10, 1 April 2013 (EDT): Apparently they do. Exercising stimulates myofibril fusion and thus growth. I assume there is a difference in taste between strong meat and atrophied meat.
  • Kevin Baldridge 11:30, 28 March 2013 (EDT):Maybe this is a better way to produce veal, which is intentionally not exercised to remain tender. Much more humane than a suffering baby cow, I think?
  • Siddharth Das 7:10, 1 April 2013 (EDT):you bring up an interesting point. Each cut of meat has indicative characteristics that give each cut flavor, texture, and etc. That depends the degree of exercise, vitamins, mineral, and even bone.

• Catherine I. Mortensen 17:55, 25 March 2013 (EDT): Would most synthetic meat end up being similar to spam...?
  • Siddharth Das 7:10, 1 April 2013 (EDT): I hope not. From my knowledge, most current sythetic meats look like processed meats similiar to spam. But, the point of bio scaffolding is allow the meat to be molded into almost replica of the meat.

• Catherine I. Mortensen 17:52, 25 March 2013 (EDT): Do you have an idea how long it took to grow the transplanted trachea and other synthetic meats for that matter?
  • Siddharth Das 7:10, 1 April 2013 (EDT): two to three weeks

• Evan Weaver 16:56, 25 March 2013 (EDT): In "The Controversy" section, can you add units to the 36.4 number? Is it a ratio?
  • Siddharth Das 7:10, 1 April 2013 (EDT): Thanks, I almost forgot. I remember telling myself during my presentation.

Yunle Huang 18:49, 25 March 2013 (EDT):A company called Modern Meadow is trying to make a meat printer. Here, you can see one of the co-founders cooking and eating a sample live. In the video, he gives examples of demand: vegetarians who care about the way animals are treated, and religions that prohibit killing of certain animals. Another co-founder also does a reddit AMA that I found interesting.

• • Siddharth Das 13:27, 1 April 2013 (EDT): Very nice citing reddit as a source. In a serious note, these are all relevant issue concerning synthetic meats. Although synthetic meats provides an alternative to killing animals, the religious implications are ridiculous to make. First, you still make this meat from progenitor cells from the animal. If some religious sects can't even drink milk that originates from an animal, I doubt this is a solution. Also, in a strictly vegetarian standpoint, most individuals would have difficulty digesting meat which they have avoided most of their lives. Second, I doubt religions are looking for solution. Even with a solution, most religions won't readily accept the new social precedent (i.e. prop 8).

• Neil R Gottel 14:10, 26 March 2013 (EDT):That Winston Churchill quote is real, in case anyone was wondering (since Churchill has a slew of quotes misattributed to him). It comes from a fairly long article that appeared in a couple different magazines (something called Strand Magazine, and Popular Mechanics). Here's a copy of it. Perhaps more relevant to our class is this line, which appears a few sentences before the synthetic meat line: "Microbes, which at present convert the nitrogen of the air into the proteins by which animals live, will be fostered and made to work under controlled conditions, just as yeast is now."
  • Siddharth Das 13:27, 1 April 2013 (EDT): Interesting!

• Catherine I. Mortensen 14:12, 26 March 2013 (EDT):A group of scientists from Japan were able to grow the optic cup of a mouse. [1]
  • Siddharth Das 13:27, 1 April 2013 (EDT): Please bring this up in class; this was a very interesting article.

• Evan Weaver 17:05, 26 March 2013 (EDT): Here's a cool video where some researchers take a rat lung and use it to grow human tissue. The decellularized lung looks kind of cool.
  • Siddharth Das 13:27, 1 April 2013 (EDT): If Jeff allows, I'd like to share this video to the class.

• Jeffrey E. Barrick 12:13, 27 March 2013 (EDT):Sid, you MUST provide attribution for the images that you are reposting in the figure captions. Also, be careful about the copyright of images.
  • Siddharth Das 13:27, 1 April 2013 (EDT):I apologize; I'll fix both this and my optogenetics article.

• Thomas Wall 11:29, 28 March 2013 (EDT):so it was requested I post this, it is pretty dubious in my opinion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1N6QfuIh0g)
  • Catherine I. Mortensen 11:08, 29 March 2013 (EDT):Haha wow... that made my weekend. If this was actually implemented I would definitely invest in food dye...
  • Siddharth Das 13:27, 1 April 2013 (EDT): This was pretty cool!