US researchers have developed a new technique to build starch backbones for lab-grown meat using Lego pieces. Spinning starch fibers using an inexpensive electrospinning device made from the popular construction toy could have future applications for the burgeoning cultured meat sector, according to a team of food scientists from Penn State and the University of Alabama.

What did the US researchers do?
The researchers built an electrospinner out of Lego blocks which is then used to create strands of starch. To produce fine starch fibers using electrospinning, electricity is applied to a starch solution as it dispenses from a nozzle. The electrical field that forms between the nozzle and a rotating collection drum draws the starch into long threads. In wet electrospinning, the drum is submerged in a bath of alcohol and water to help congeal the fibers.

“There is a lot of interest in natural fibers,” Professor Ziegler explains. “Starch is one of the least expensive natural fibers out there. Nobody had been able to electrospin pure starch fibers before. But we figured out a way to do that using this wet electrospinning technique.”

The study has been recently published in Food Hydrocolloids, the researchers built an inexpensive electrospinning device partially using the popular childrens toy Lego.

“The reason we chose Lego is were going to have water and ethanol in there and we dont want the device to be conductive,” continues Ziegler. “The plastic was perfect.”

By altering the drum rotation speed and the amount of ethanol in the electrospinning bath, the researchers optimized fiber alignment in the starch mats. They also found that mats with better-aligned fibers were stronger than those with a crisscrossed array.

TThe researchers built an electrospinner out of Lego blocks which is then used to create strands of starch. o culture meat, animal muscle cells are cultivated in a nutrient-rich broth. If no structural support is provided, the cells grow without organization and resemble ground beef. It is more challenging to grow a steak-like product because the muscle cells must grow on a scaffold of appropriate size and alignment to form the characteristic texture consumers expect of a filet mignon or T-bone, notes the research.

Natural starch fiber mats could provide scaffolds for growing meat cells, notes Ziegler. “Weve been able to align our scaffolding that could grow aligned muscle cells. A lot of scaffoldings that have been put out there for biomedical applications have synthetic plastic fibers. Who wants to eat plastic? Even if its biodegradable, people dont want plastic in their meat. Here we have starch and it just comes from corn. The idea is we could make a nice edible clean scaffold for our clean meat.”

The next step is to test if muscle cells will grow on the starch mats and whether they develop in alignment with the fibers. The researchers also are exploring ways to make starch fibers in specific patterns using 3D-printing technology and they plan to scale up their equipment to produce larger quantities of the fibers.

As interest and investment in lab-grown meat gains traction, the researchers have been examining how starch fiber mats have potential biomedical and food applications, including for lab-grown meat.

The new era of cultured meat production is well and truly underway and a world without slaughter could be the future. Lab-grown meat is about more than just saving animals’ lives, although animal welfare and ethics are strong drivers for shifting consumer preferences. The clean meat revolution represents a seismic technological shift for humanity, with strong potential sustainability messages.

Cultured meat uses less land, water and antibiotics to produce compared to traditional farming practices, and according to one of the researchers, Gregory Ziegler, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Food Science at Penn State, there is growing interest and opportunities in such meat.

As the debate around the environmental effects of climate change and the impact on food security heightens, global meat consumption has come under the spotlight with a new surge of calls to reduce meat eating to avoid a climate breakdown. 

Many start-ups, including Israeli company, Aleph Farms, believe that we will see more lab-grown meat in the future as “clean” meat becomes a more viable solution for consumers who are concerned about animal welfare and sustainable protein solutions.

“Approximately 56 billion animals are slaughtered every year (not including fish), a large part of those are in intensive/factory farming facilities. We believe that the development of slaughter-free meat will be an opportunity for farmers to revert to traditional and humane animal farming practices,” Aleph Farms CEO Didier Toubia, has previously told.