A bovine myogenic organoid – a model for muscle development and a scalable approach for muscle generation in a non-model mammal

The meat industry is one of the main causes of environmental degradation. Due to world population growth, meat consumption is expected to double between 1999 and 2050. Cultured meat (CM) is a promising solution to counter the expected damage of conventional meat production. Since skeletal muscles are the main tissue used in most animal meat, generation of skeletal muscles in-vitro is required for the efficient production of CM. Although the in-vitro differentiation into skeletal muscles was achieved decades ago in model organisms, existing protocols are not suitable for food applications due to high production cost, stemming mostly from expensive growth factors, and the inherent difficulty for scale up. Current bioreactor technologies support suspended cultures, while most protocols for skeletal muscle differentiation are based on adherent cultures.

Here we developed a novel organoid that recapitulates the developmental stages that cells undergo during embryonic development from bovine pluripotent (ES) cells to skeletal muscle cells, in a 3D suspension organoid format, and relies heavily on intra-organoid signaling. These properties make the organoid more amenable to adaptation to industrial scale.

Our goal is to establish culture conditions for growth and aggregation of these non-model ES cells, and the biochemical manipulations required to extend the differentiation to the somite stage, and beyond it, up to mature myocytes. Such a muscle organoid can contribute to studies of early muscle development in livestock animals, as well as serve as a platform for mass production of muscle tissue for cultured meat.