In Vitro Insect Muscle for Tissue Engineering Applications

Abstract

Tissue engineering is primarily associated with medical disciplines, and research has thus focused on mammalian cells. For applications where clinical relevance is not a constraint, it is useful to evaluate the potential of alternative cell sources to form tissues in vitro. Specifically, skeletal muscle tissue engineering for bioactuation and cultured foods could benefit from the incorporation of invertebrate cells because of their less stringent growth requirements and other versatile features. Here, we used a Drosophila muscle cell line to demonstrate the benefits of insect cells relative to those derived from vertebrates. The cells were adapted to serum-free media, transitioned between adherent and suspension cultures, and manipulated with hormones. Furthermore, we analyzed edible scaffolds to support cell adhesion and assayed cellular protein and minerals to evaluate nutrition potential. The insect muscle cells exhibited advantageous growth patterns and hold unique functionality for tissue engineering applications beyond the medical realm.

Hybrid Living Materials: Digital Design and Fabrication of 3D Multimaterial Structures with Programmable Biohybrid Surfaces

“…While E. coli provided a proof of concept for the HLM platform, other cell lines may be utilized in future biohybrid research with this platform, thereby providing different functional properties to HLM constructs. For example, candidate cells with less stringent culturing requirements, such as Bacillus subtilis or insect cells, have the potential to provide known properties (e.g., desiccation resistance and actuation). Advantageously, the modular nature of the HLM framework permits the components—both hydrogel and cell strain—to be interchanged in a straightforward fashion without impacting the print regime.…”

Sensorial and Nutritional Aspects of Cultured Meat in Comparison to Traditional Meat: Much to Be Inferred

“…Basal media for cell culture contain no iron (e.g., IMDM, RPMI1640) or only a low amount of iron in the form of ferric nitrate nonahydrate (DMEM: 0.1 mg/L) or ferrous sulfate heptahydrate (Ham's media 0.8 mg/L). Supplementation of the cell culture medium with extra iron results in an increase of iron content of the cells, although only part of the iron is taken up, suggesting there might be a limit to the amount of nutrients the cells can incorporate (36). Uptake is dependent on transferrin, a protein which binds iron and mediates transport in the cell (34,35).…”

Cell-Based Fish: A Novel Approach to Seafood Production and an Opportunity for Cellular Agriculture

“…In the past 5 years, research focused on cell-based meats has accelerated from the tasting of the cell-cultured hamburger in 2013 (Zaraska, 2013) and early publications, including lifecycle assessments and basic research (Tuomisto and Teixeira de Mattos, 2011;Post, 2012Post, , 2014, to a growing start-up community, updated life cycle assessments, and publications focused on refining the technologies required to accelerate cellbased meat production (Tuomisto et al, 2014;Krieger et al, 2018;Rubio et al, 2019). To date, research decisions in cell-based meat production, such as selection of cell species and cell type have been largely driven by market size and environmental impact (Rodriguez-Fernandez, 2019), rather than suitability of cells species and types suitable for large scale bioreactor cultivation.…”

“…Many scaffolds that support various cell cultures use chitosan solutions as low as 0.5% (Katalinich, 2001). To create films to support cell culture, chitosan solutions are cast on glass substrates and allowed to dry, then rinsed with buffer to neutralize the acetyl groups, washed with water or PBS and sterilized with 70% ethanol and UV light prior to cell seeding (Rubio et al, 2019). Chitosan can also be manipulated to produce physically associated or cross-linked hydrogels (Drury and Mooney, 2003), porous sponges with tunable mechanical properties and pore size distributions (Jana et al, 2013;Rubio et al, 2019) and dry or wet spun fibers (Croisier and Jérôme, 2013).…”