Hybrid cultivated meats are an emerging meat alternative containing cultivated livestock cells and alternative proteins (commonly plant-based proteins). These two components are incorporated into a food matrix as an edible scaffold during cell production or during product formulation to generate whole foods for human consumption. Cultivated meat development is driven by the need to develop alternative protein sources to address growing meat consumption, livestock associated environmental degradation, animal welfare concerns, optimised human nutrition, food safety, product cost, and scalability factors (Post et al., 2020).
Combining edible scaffolds made from plant-based proteins with cultured livestock cells will produce novel hybrid food matrices that could improve the organoleptic properties of plant-based protein foods, while decreasing the cost of cultivated meat. Scaffold biomaterials serve as a supportive network which allow for cell adhesion, provide guidance for cell proliferation, differentiation, and organisation, and facilitate transport of oxygen and nutrients to thick tissue.
Understanding the matrix interactions between plant-based proteins and cultivated livestock cells is central to developing successful hybrid cultivated meat products. Achieving desirable consumer properties is only possible by understanding the food matrix structure. Currently, there is little understanding of what influence these interactions have on the overall biophysical properties of hybrid cultivated meat matrices, which affects the appearance, taste, texture, and nutritional profile - all desirable consumer properties.
Our research explores the use of the wheat glutenin protein as a scaffold model system to investigate the effect of matrix structure on organoleptic properties of hybrid cultivated meats. Glutenin comprises high- and low-molecular weight proteins, which form large polymers through networks of inter- and intramolecular disulfide bonds, by changing the processing conditions we can induce these interactions as a form of physical cross-linking to avoid the use of toxic chemical cross-linkers, suggesting a promising scaffold production method.
By investigating food matrix structure within this system we will develop fundamental understanding of the interactions between relevant proteins for future studies investigating the applicability of a wider range of food-grade protein materials and adapting serum-free culture systems.