<final hijack>
I see–I was thinking about the Meat subspecies in Mote in God’s Eye, and I seem to recall that you read Niven. Oh, well–I can’t guess right all the time.
</final hijack>
Derleth:
“647: When did I mention antibodies? I said ‘engineered bacteria’ or ‘nanobots’, not antibodies. Unless you can show me where I said antibodies, you argument evaporates.”
Derleth:
“Again true, but the vats would be hermetically sealed in the equivalent of clean rooms. I think meat production would become as sanitary and controlled as antibiotic production is now.”
Derleth, you’re right. I didn’t read you’re post well enough. Antibodies are different from antibiotics. Sorry I misunderstood you. It was my bad. And, my apologies to you.
As far as the space station thing goes, I may very well be wrong, but my impression is that “zero-gravity science” is the buzz word for the public to disguise that fact that the real purpose of the space station is to subidized the aerospace industry.
This is not my area, but after reading Robert Park’s ‘Voodoo Science’, I’m under the impression that there have been no significant advances in the field of biology that have come from zero-gravity research. I may be wrong and if anyone can show me some research published in a high-impact factor journal, I’ll glady read it and reevalute my position.
‘American Scientist’ had something a few months ago about it and the article had drawing of a frog swimming with a different motion, a lizard grabbing its own tail, and a rat cling to the back of a monkey(?). New animal behaviors demonstrated in zero-G. WTF? This is the biology research worthy of the millions, if not a billion+ that the U.S. and other countries are going to spend? O.K. they had something about oocyte formation also, but why show us frog swimming then?
I’m all for space exploration, in fact, I want to see more. If I hadn’t have gone into biology, I probably would have done astronomy. But don’t try to bullshit me.
Humans have be going into space in the name of science now for like 40 years. Somebody on the SDMB please tell me where to find the ground breaking biological research articles. I’d honestly like to read them.
But if it’s a smoke screen to prop up our aerospace industry, we could take that budget and probably find a way grow meat in a lab using all that money (eventually and then maybe). But a proposal might be funded.
This may be innaccurate hearsay, but in my field the researchers bitch about the fact that one B-2 bomber costs more than the entire annual USDA research funding budget. Supposedly, if you cut one bomber and gave the money to the USDA, you could fund every grant proposal in a given year. (Whether all those proposals deserve funding is a different story).
Still, somebody give me a ‘Nature’ or ‘Science’ or similar journal article on zero-G biology breakthroughs. Please. I’d like to be wrong about this.
647, I’d love to help you, but I don’t have any cites offhand. Also, this is really a hijack from the thread, not to mention that it sounds more like GD territory than GQ. So let’s not get into the merits of the space station and biological research in “zero-g”.
Irishman said:
Ah ha! And yet…
I can only assume there have been other advances since this article was published.
Necros, crap, I knew that would cause confusion. There was a paragraph break in the middle there. The last sentence was, in fact, meant to apply to all the descriptions above, not just skin growth. I was aware skin for burn victims is grown in limited quantities. However, it does require certain extra processes for deep burns. They currently use base matter from corpses to cover the burns, then graft the new tissue over it. I don’t know a lot of the details, but heard something about it on the news when a local kid was severely burned (98% of tissue burned), and they were fighting to keep him alive.
Yeah, I found a document supporting my statements about gravity affecting ability to grow tissue in culture.
From http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/Microgravity_Teachers_Guide.pdf (this is a pdf file, you need Acrobat reader):
“Another reason normal mammalian cells are sensitive to growth conditions found in standard bioreactors is that fluid flow causes shear forces that discourage cell aggregation. This limits both the development of the tissue and the degree to which it possesses structures and functions similar to those found in the human body. [snip]
NASA is beginning to explore the possibility of culturing
tissues in microgravity, where even greater reduction in stresses on growing tissue samples may allow much larger tissue masses to develop.”
That’s fascinating. I guess that’s why elephants can’t have babies on earth.
Yeah, your sarcasm is unwarranted. I’m guessing here, but I think the difference has to do with embryonic stem cells (baby elephants) vs. differentiated tissue (a whole kidney by itself).
Sorry, but your guesses invite it.
This post is old as hell, but I had to join to point out to you genius’s the latest update. FISH!
Thank you,
Your friendly neighborhood smart-ass
In vitro meat is already advancing. Right now I think they can get small chunks of meat which can be used for ground beef or chicken mcnuggets and things like that.
However replicating a steak is extremely hard. You have to replicate all the blood vessels, tendons, bone, etc. and then you have to exercise the muscle by constantly stretching and moving it around.
As a ground beef type food, it is likely only a few years away. But things like steaks are likely much further down the line.
However since in vitro meat involves manufacturing and biotechnology (two fields that constantly experience increases in productivity and efficiency) the prices should go down rapidly, esp with mass production.
Or human.
Would you eat me? I’d eat me.
(Goodbye Horses… )
(Also, Transmetropolitan)
They can already grow pork in the laboratory, but they are issues with the texture that need to be addressed.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6936352.ece
The highest priorities are beef and lamb since they have the highest GHG footprint. A pound of beef has 13 times the GHG footprint of a pound of chicken. This is mostly because cattle and sheep are ruminants that produce large quantities of methane which is a much stronger GHG than CO2.
In science fiction my first recollection were the carniculture vats aboard the space ships in H. Beam Piper stories like Space Viking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Beam_Piper
The copyrights on much of his work has lapsed and can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/p#a8301
The story Four-day Planet has several mentions of Carniculture.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19478
mmm… zombie vat meat…
This thread reminds me of the Better off Ted episode where they grew meat in a vat.
The meat tasted depressed.
But as I learned by reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, the feedlot manure isn’t wanted by farmers. I think it’s mixed too much with the urine. Anyway, they don’t want it, and it becomes quite a local environmental problem.
Tanks for the mammaries?
For the record, I’m not going to attempt to defend statements I may or may not have made nine years ago…