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Lab-grown meat: the science of turning cells into steaks and nuggets

Companies making cultured meat are attracting billions of dollars of investment. Here are their biggest challenges.
  1. Nicola Jones
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Stylised illustration showing a fast food meal consisting of a hamburger, fries, salad and meat presented in a Petri dish.

Illustration by Elena Resko

“It tastes like chicken.” That’s a common review of UPSIDE Foods’ new trial product. Perhaps that’s not surprising: it is, after all, chicken — at the cellular level. But the fillets are not from a slaughterhouse. They are grown in bioreactors in an urban factory in California.

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Nature 619, 22-24 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02095-6

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