A Key Meat Protein Has Been Grown in Lettuce For The First Time
The study found the protein could be inherited in seedlings, and researchers said scaled production may rival livestock farming.
- On Thursday, Imperial College London researchers published a study in Frontiers in Plant Science showing they engineered tobacco and lettuce to produce myoglobin, the animal protein that gives meat its red color and savory flavor.
- Myoglobin stores oxygen in animal muscle and provides beef its metallic, umami taste and red color. Scientists engineered plants to produce this protein as a more sustainable ingredient for alternative meat products.
- Using a gene gun, the team inserted DNA into chloroplasts, yielding about 800mg to 810mg of protein per kilogram of dried leaf. However, heme occupancy reached only about 35 per cent, compared to 80 per cent in bacterial production.
- Co-Author Dr Kyoko Morimoto of Kyomei added that modified lettuce might one day serve as a heme-iron-enriched biofortified food, subject to legislative approval.
- Prof Derek Stewart of the James Hutton Institute cautioned that further research must confirm food safety and functionality, noting that tobacco naturally produces bioactive alkaloids complicating extraction.
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Anyone For Meat Lettuce? Plants Genetically Engineered To Produce Pig Protein By Adding Animal Gene To Their Cells
The lettuce, while more meaty than the regular kind, can produce only one of the many components of muscle, and so doesn't look or taste particularly porky.
The Independent
The Independent (US)Scientists put pig gene into lettuce to make plant-based burgers taste like meat
Scientists inserted a copy of the pig gene into lettuce and found plants not only produced protein but grew normally, flowered and passed trait to next generation
A Key Meat Protein Has Been Grown in Lettuce For The First Time
Eating meat is consistently shown to be one of the worst things we can do for the environment as consumers, due to the outsized negative impacts animal agriculture has on land, water and energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions.
The world market for alternatives to meat weighs between 6,7 and 8,1 billion euros a year. However, it lacks the molecule that gives the steak its red colour and its metallic flavour. This molecule is called myoglobin. A team from Imperial College London, associated with the British company Kyomei, proposes a new way of obtaining it. His work appears on August 6, 2026 in Frontiers in Plant Science. The researchers inserted the gene of pig myoglo…
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