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SCIENTISTS USE STEM CELLS TO GROW ANIMAL-FREE PORK IN A LAB

WHY IT MATTERS TO YOU Lab-grown meat could bring an end to unnecessary animal deaths. A new research paper just brought that dream one step closer. A new study published in the  journal  Scientific Reports  has taken us one step closer to the dream of animal-free meat. (And, no, in case your mind immediately goes to the 1973 sci-fi movie  Soylent Green , it ain’t people, either!) “What the paper describes is research designed to generate muscle from a newly established pig stem-cell line, rather that from primary cells taken directly from a pig,” co-author Dr. Nicholas Genovese, a stem-cell biologist (and vegetarian), told Digital Trends. “This entailed understanding the biology of relatively uncharacterized and recently-derived porcine induced pluripotent stem cell lines. What conditions support cell growth, survival and differentiation? These are all questions I had to figure out in the lab before the cells could be turned into muscle.” As you can imagine, thi...