Flesh Stunt You’ve heard of attempts to resurrect extinct animals, but this one might make your stomach turn. Vow, an Australian cultivated meat company, has cooked up in its lab one of the most exotic and downright bizarre sources of protein your taste buds could ever relish: mammoth meatballs. And no, “mammoth” isn’t a descriptor of its size. We truly mean a meatball made from the flesh of a wooly mammoth — or at least, an approximation of it. If that’s turning your head, well, that’s the point. Vow wants to raise awareness of lab grown meat as a tasty and cruelty-free alternative to the real deal, not to mention one that’s less environmentally destructive. In this regard, the choice of a mammoth is meant to symbolize the loss of wildlife to humans and climate change. A potent and rousing symbol, if only undermined by the fact that it comes in the form of a weighty meatball. “We need to start rethinking how we get our food. My biggest hope for this project is… that a lot more people across the world begin to hear about cultured meat,” James Ryall, Vow’s chief scientific officer, told CNN. Frankenmeat As far as food goes, this is about as Frankenstein of a creation as it gets. First, Vow scientists grabbed the mammoth DNA sequence for myoglobin, a skeletal muscle protein found in mammals, and then filled in the gaps using elephant DNA. To culture the meat, the scientists inserted the mammoth myoglobin sequence into…Gene Hackers Create Meatball From Resurrected Mammoth Meat

Flesh Stunt You’ve heard of attempts to resurrect extinct animals, but this one might make your stomach turn. Vow, an Australian cultivated meat company, has cooked up in its lab one of the most exotic and downright bizarre sources of protein your taste buds could ever relish: mammoth meatballs. And no, “mammoth” isn’t a descriptor of its size. We truly mean a meatball made from the flesh of a wooly mammoth — or at least, an approximation of it. If that’s turning your head, well, that’s the point. Vow wants to raise awareness of lab grown meat as a tasty and cruelty-free alternative to the real deal, not to mention one that’s less environmentally destructive. In this regard, the choice of a mammoth is meant to symbolize the loss of wildlife to humans and climate change. A potent and rousing symbol, if only undermined by the fact that it comes in the form of a weighty meatball. “We need to start rethinking how we get our food. My biggest hope for this project is… that a lot more people across the world begin to hear about cultured meat,” James Ryall, Vow’s chief scientific officer, told CNN. Frankenmeat As far as food goes, this is about as Frankenstein of a creation as it gets. First, Vow scientists grabbed the mammoth DNA sequence for myoglobin, a skeletal muscle protein found in mammals, and then filled in the gaps using elephant DNA. To culture the meat, the scientists inserted the mammoth myoglobin sequence into…Gene Hackers Create Meatball From Resurrected Mammoth Meat