Synthetic / Printed Meat

[INRM]

This is one of the wackiest questions I've ever asked, and I'm reluctant to even ask it...

But

I remember hearing about some kind of concept which entailed using a device not entirely unlike a 3D printer to produce synthetic proteins binded in some kind of stuff to produce an artificial synthetic meat.

Supposedly someone stated that they have been able to print entire cells.

Is any of this true, and is it true that they can "print" cells?

[TX50]

Are you sure it was biological cells and not electrical cells? It's possible to "print" a battery, for example.

[El Greco]

Totally impossible. We are probably thousands of years away from "printing" cells.

[paximperium]

No. It isn't printing cells. It is printing 3D structures using cells.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TCW-480CN44-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=d8c1684d53c6fd3d9d886da806da42a6

[Ziggurat]

Totally impossible. We are probably thousands of years away from "printing" cells.

I don't think it would work that way. I think you print out a protein matrix into which cells are grown, or maybe just print out a protein matrix that tastes and feels like meet (since your tongue doesn't have cell-level resolution). I don't think anyone is suggesting printing an actual cell from scratch.

Edit: seems from the above link I was sort-of correct: the printer makes a gel matrix, but injects live cells into the matrix at the same time. The cells would then grow from where they're placed.

[paximperium]

One more article of 3D cellular printing
http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_skin_printing.html

[G-K-4]

Maybe you were thinking about "cultured meat"? http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/scitech/release.cfm?ArticleID=1098

That press release is from four years ago. It would be interesting to know of this stuff has been published in the relevant journals since.

Jamais Cascio takes it a couple steps further. How about printing your own open-source meat?
http://openthefuture.com/2006/12/bioprinters_vs_the_meatrix.html

[INRM]

G-K-4,

So they can actually print-out stem-cells which then differentiate into bone and meat?


INRM

[BenBurch]

PETA would still find a reason to get naked in public to protest it.

[Skwinty]

I tried a "rib burger" at a fast food outlet the other day.
There were no bones and a solid piece of meat. Tasted very artificial and not something I would want to eat again (unless of course there was nothing else). Could this have been the "printed form" of meat. It is a recent addition to the outlets menu.

[luchog]

I tried a "rib burger" at a fast food outlet the other day.
There were no bones and a solid piece of meat. Tasted very artificial and not something I would want to eat again (unless of course there was nothing else). Could this have been the "printed form" of meat. It is a recent addition to the outlets menu.
No, not "printed". That technology is still very much in its infancy.

The majority of these sorts of formed meat products are made from cheap cuts of meat that are ground into a sort of paste, combined with binders and various other additives, formed into whatever shape is desired, then re-frozen.