Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have grown rabbit and cow muscles cells on edible gelatin scaffolds that mimic the texture and consistency of meat, demonstrating that realistic meat products may eventually be produced without the need to raise and slaughter animals.

The research is published in Nature Science of Food.

Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at SEAS and senior author of the study, began his foray into food after judging a competition show on the Food Network.

“The materials science expertise of the chefs was impressive,” said Parker. “After discussions with them, I began to wonder if we could apply all that we knew about regenerative medicine to the design of synthetic foods. After all, everything we have learned about building organs and tissues for regenerative medicine applies to food: healthy cells and healthy scaffolds are the building substrates, the design rules are the same, and the goals are the same: human health. This is our first effort to bring hardcore engineering design and scalable manufacturing to the creation of food.”

Animal meat consists mostly of skeletal muscle (and fat tissue) which grow in long, thin fibers — as can be seen in the grain of a steak or when shredding pork or chicken. Reproducing these fibers is one of the biggest challenges in bioengineering meat.

“Muscle cells are adherent cell types, meaning they need something to hold onto as they grow,” said Luke Macqueen, first author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and the Wyss Institute for Bioinspired Engineering. “To grow muscle tissues that resembled meat, we needed to find a ‘scaffold’ material that was edible and allowed muscle cells to attach and grow in 3D. It was important to find an efficient way to produce large amounts of these scaffolds to justify their potential use in food production.”

To overcome these challenges, the researchers used a technique developed by Parker and his Disease Biophysics Group known as immersion Rotary Jet-Spinning (iRJS), which uses centrifugal force to spin long nanofibers of specific shapes and sizes. The team spun food-safe gelatin fibers to form the base for growing cells. The fibers mimic natural muscle tissue’s extracellular matrix — the glue that holds the tissue together and contributes to its texture.

The team seeded the fibers with rabbit and cow muscle cells, which anchored to the gelatin and grow in long, thin structures, similar to real meat. The researchers used mechanical testing to compare the texture of their lab-grown meat to real rabbit, bacon, beef tenderloin, prosciutto and other meat products.

“When we analyzed the microstructure and texture, we found that, although the cultured and natural products had comparable texture, natural meat contained more muscle fibers, meaning they were more mature,” said Macqueen. “Muscle and fat cell maturation in vitro are still a really big challenge that will take a combination of advanced stem cell sources, serum-free culture media formulations, edible scaffolds such as ours, as well as advances in bioreactor culture methods to overcome.”

Still, this research shows that full lab-grown meat is possible.

“Our methods are always improving and we have clear objectives because our design rules are informed by natural meats. Eventually, we think it may be possible to design meats with defined textures, tastes, and nutritional profiles — a bit like brewing,” said Macqueen.

“Moving forward, the goals are nutritional content, taste, texture, and affordable pricing. The long-range goal is reducing the environmental footprint of food,” said Parker.

“The development of cultured meat involves a number of technical challenges, including the formulation of a scaffold material that can successfully support cells and the development of cell lines that are amenable to cultivation for consumption at scale,” said Kate Krueger, Research Director at New Harvest, a cellular agriculture research institution, who was not involved in the research. “The authors of this publication have developed scaffold materials that show great promise in these areas.”

Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has protected the intellectual property relating to this project and is exploring commercialization opportunities.

This research was co-authored by Charles G. Alver, Christophe O. Chantre, Seungkuk Ahn, Luca Cera, Grant M. Gonzalez, Blakely B. O ‘Connor, Daniel J. Drennan, Michael M. Peters, Sarah E. Motta and John F. Zimmerman. It was supported by SEAS, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and the TomKat Foundation.

In interviews with 45 married couples, researchers found that mothers influenced their adult children’s health in the same way they had through life — by being there when they’re needed to help their child get through a health crisis.

But when it comes to dads — well, they’re most helpful by showing their adult children what not to do to stay healthy.

“Adults in our study sometimes talked about how they were affected by their fathers having really poor health behaviors, like smoking or heavy drinking,” said Alexandra Kissling, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at The Ohio State University.

“They really wanted to make sure they didn’t make the same mistakes.”

Kissling conducted the study with Corinne Reczek, professor of sociology at Ohio State. Their results were published online recently in the Journal of Family Issues and will appear in a future print edition.

The researchers did in-depth interviews with 90 adults (comprising 45 married couples) who were between 40 and 60 years old. The sample included 30 gay men, 30 lesbian women and 30 heterosexual men and women, all who were legally married residents of Massachusetts.

Because few studies have examined parental influence on the health of adult children, the researchers decided to do in-depth interviews to determine what issues were most important to them, Kissling said.

“This allows the participants to drive the conversation so that they can tell us what is most relevant and important to them,” she said.

The researchers asked participants not only how their own parents affected their health, but also about the influence of their in-laws.

Overall, many participants did not perceive parents and in-laws as having an impact on their health, either positively or negatively, Kissling said. Those who didn’t see an effect generally said they set boundaries with parents and in-laws and that the marital relationship was the one that really mattered to them in terms of health.

But, depending on the issue, between about one-quarter and slightly more than a third of the participants felt parents and in-laws did have an impact.

The researchers did not find important gender differences in how adult sons or daughters perceived the effects of mothers and fathers on their health.

Generally, adult children felt that mothers were a positive influence on their health, either by helping them when they were sick or by being counted on to be available if needed.

These results contribute to research on “intensive mothering,” which is the idea that mothers are responsible for their children’s welfare and consistently support them, Kissling said.

“That level of caring never stops, and mothers are there to help their child even as adults,” she said.

Mothers-in-law were also deemed helpful, but their influence comes through the person’s spouse.

“In our sample, it was unlikely that a person would call up their mother-in-law and ask for her to take care of them at home after surgery, for example,” she said.

“They would call their own mom. But their spouse would find that helpful, because they could continue to go to work knowing that things would be taken care of at home.”

As for fathers and fathers-in-law, the study found that a common response from participants was that dads were “cautionary tales” when it came to health.

For these participants, fathers were seen as negative examples — a finding that aligns with research that suggests men take more health risks and have worse health behaviors compared with women, according to Kissling.

“People discussed fathers’ and fathers-in-laws’ addiction to alcohol and drugs as negative health examples, which encouraged them to make healthier life choices during their adulthood,” she said.

Adults in the study who had to contend with their parents’ own health issues said that this negatively affected their health — particularly if they lived with their parents.

In general, gay and lesbian adults in the study had very similar opinions about their parents’ influence on their health as did heterosexual respondents, Kissling said.

The Skin-On interface, developed by researchers at the University of Bristol in partnership with Telecomm ParisTech and Sorbonne University, mimics human skin in appearance but also in sensing resolution.

The researchers adopted a bio-driven approach to developing a multi-layer, silicone membrane that mimics the layers present in human skin. This is made up of a surface textured layer, an electrode layer of conductive threads and a hypodermis layer. Not only is the interface more natural than a rigid casing, it can also detect a plethora of gestures made by the end-users. As a result, the artificial skin allows devices to ‘feel’ the user’s grasp — its pressure and location, and can detect interactions such as tickling, caressing, even twisting and pinching.

“This is the first time we have the opportunity to add skin to our interactive devices. The idea is perhaps a bit surprising, but skin is an interface we are highly familiar with so why not use it and its richness with the devices we use every day?” said Dr Anne Roudaut, Associate Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Bristol, who supervised the research.

“Artificial skin has been widely studied in the field of Robotics but with a focus on safety, sensing or cosmetic aims. This is the first research we are aware of that looks at exploiting realistic artificial skin as a new input method for augmenting devices,” said Marc Teyssier, lead author.

In the study, researchers created a phone case, computer touch pad and smart watch to demonstrate how touch gestures on the Skin-On interface can convey expressive messages for computer mediated communication with humans or virtual characters.

“One of the main use of smartphones is mediated communication, using text, voice, video, or a combination. We implemented a messaging application where users can express rich tactile emotions on the artificial skin. The intensity of the touch controls the size of the emojis. A strong grip conveys anger while tickling the skin displays a laughing emoji and tapping creates a surprised emoji” said Marc Teyssier.

“This work explores the intersection between man and machine. We have seen many works trying to augment human with parts of machines, here we look at the other way around and try to make the devices we use every day more like us, i.e. human-like,” said Dr Roudaut.

It may not be long before these tactile devices become the norm. The paper offers all the steps needed to replicate this research, and the authors are inviting developers with an interest in Skin-On interfaces to get in touch.

Researchers say the next step will be making the skin even more realistic. They have already started looking at embedding hair and temperature features which could be enough to give devices — and those around them — goose-bumps.

Paper: Marc Teyssier, Gilles Bailly, Catherine Pelachaud, Eric Lecolinet, Andrew Conn, Anne Roudaut. Skin-On Interfaces: A Bio-Driven Approach for Artificial Skin Design to Cover Interactive Devices. UIST 2019

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While multiple robotic arm devices already exist, most are heavy, expensive and outside the reach of individuals who lack the expertise to use them.

Mantis, designed by experts in human-computer interaction from Bristol’s team of engineers, is the first system of its kind that enables light, affordable and accessible haptic force feedback.

Human beings have five senses, but electronic devices communicate with us using predominantly just two: sight and hearing. Haptic feedback (often shortened to just haptics) changes this by simulating the sense of touch. Not only can you touch a computer or other device, but the computer can touch you back. A force feedback is a particular kind that can provide force.

Theoretically, the Mantis could be built and used by anyone upwards from a secondary school student. Not only that, researcher say the Mantis can be built for 20 times less the expense of the market equivalent because it uses components, including brushless motors, that cost significantly less than high-fidelity equivalents that are often confined to research labs.

“Humans already have a great sense of touch. Mantis expands on this innate ability by enabling people to touch and feel 3D objects, adding more depth to the VR experience,” says lead researcher Dr Anne Roudaut, from Bristol’s Department of Computer Science.

“Imagine a user playing a game in Virtual Reality with Mantis attached to their fingers. They could then touch and feel virtual objects, thus immersing themselves both visually and physically in an alternative dimension.”

Dr Roudaut and her PhD student Gareth Barnaby, are in New Orleans (19-23 October) presenting the Mantis at the User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) conference, the premier forum for innovations in human-computer interfaces that brings together people from graphical and web user interfaces, tangible and ubiquitous computing, and virtual and augmented reality.

Project Mantis is also supported by a new a spin-out venture, Senmag Robotics, which researchers hope will enable them to progress their design to market, starting with the production and testing of the first kits ready for release by the end of the year.

“We will be giving out the plans to allow anyone to build a Mantis,” adds Gareth Barnaby. “Because we are keen to make force feedback devices more widespread and not confined to research labs, we are also looking to produce some easy to build kits as well as pre-built versions that we will make available on the website.”

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Leverhulme Trust.

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