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4B Daily News – Tuesday, August 6, 2013 Growing hamburger in a lab (Q&A) By Maria Cheng AP Medical Writer LONDON — At a public tasting in London on Monday, Dutch scientists served a single hamburger made from cow stem cells. Some questions and answers about the science behind the revolutionary patty, how it could help combat climate change and what it actually tastes like. Q: What are stem cells? A: Stem cells are an organism's master cells and can be turned into any other cell type in the body, i.e. blood, tissue, muscle, etc. Adult stem cells are found in small numbers in most human tissues, including bone marrow, fat and muscle. Q: Why is the meat so expensive to produce? A: The technology is new and scientists are making very small quantities of meat. There are no economies of scale to offset the initial high costs. If more scientists or companies start using the technology to produce more meat products, that could drop the price substantially and speed up its production. Q: When could this meat be in stores? A: Probably not for another 10 to 20 years. It would take years to refine the technology, encourage other producers and scientists to get involved, and overcome any regulatory issues. Q: Who paid for the research? A: Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, underwrote the 250,000-euro ($330,000) project, which began in 2006. The Dutch government previously donated 2 million euros to the research. Q: How is this better for the environment? A: It could reduce the number of animals needed for the meat industry. Raising cows, pigs, chickens, etc., contributes substantially to climate change through the production of methane gas. Growing meat in the laboratory could reduce the impact on agricultural land, water and resources. Q: How long does it take to grow a burger? A: At the moment, a long time. It has taken two years for scientists to refine the process to grow enough meat. To actually grow enough meat for a couple of burgers would probably take about eight weeks. Actually forming the lab-made meat into a hamburger patty takes about two hours because scientists must put many separate strands together. Q: What does the process involve? A: Scientists first take a sample of muscles from a cow in a process they say is a painless biopsy. They then put those cells into a nutrient solution that helps them reproduce. After that, they are placed into a donut-shaped dish where the cells organize themselves into bits of muscle tissue. Electrical stimulation is sometimes used to exercise the muscle cells, which flex spontaneously. Once there are enough strands of meat (about 20,000 small strands), scientists can make a five-ounce (140gram) hamburger. Q: What are the implications for vegetarians? A: PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, supports attempts to grow meat in labs because they say that will greatly diminish the amount of animal suffering. Donor animals are needed for the muscle cells, but taking those samples doesn't hurt the animal. One sample can theoretically provide up to 20,000 tons of labmade meat. But lab-grown meat is still meat. Q: Is it possible to make other kinds of meat in the laboratory? A: Yes. The science is theoretically the same, so the same techniques should also allow researchers to make chicken, fish, lamb, etc. Dutch researcher Mark Post, who led the research on the lab-made hamburger, initially started working with pig cells before switching to cows. He said it would even be possible to make meat products from other animals like penguins, though he has no plans to start on that. Q: Can they make other meat products? A: At the moment, scientists are only working on making processed or minced meat, because that is the easiest kind to replicate. Processed meat accounts for about half of the meat market. Post said it should be possible to make more complicated cuts like steaks or chops in the future, but that involves using more advanced tissue engineering techniques. He estimates that it might be possible to make a steak in about 20 years. Q: Perhaps most importantly, what does it taste like? A: Apparently it's a little bland. At a public tasting on Monday in London, two food experts said the texture was convincing but that it lacked flavor; the lab-made burger does not contain any fat, but was cooked in oil and butter. Post said he wanted people to taste the burger without condiments, in its purest form. Camping resets your biological clock By Relaxnews Want to be a morning person? A new small study suggests taking a weeklong camping trip to reset your internal biological clock to both wake up earlier and feel more alert when you do. The research from the University of Colorado at Boulder found that subjects who spent more time exposed to natural light and less time in artificial lighting shifted their bedtimes and rising times to up to two hours earlier, while the total number of hours they slept stayed the same. Findings were published online August 1 in the journal Current Biology. After the camping trip, the night owls showed the biggest shifts in the timing of their internal clocks, said study researcher Kenneth P. Wright, Jr., an associate professor of physiology. In the study, researchers took a group of eight adults averaging around the age of 30 to Colorado's Rocky Mountains for a week while wearing a wristband device that measures light exposure. Campers could use only natural sources of light, such as sunlight and a campfire, and abstained from using computers, flashlights, and mobile phones. Prior to the camping trip, subjects also spent a week living their normal lives while wearing the wrist device. Also, both before the trip and after it ended, researchers measured levels of the hormone melatonin, which regulates sleep and wakefulness. While camping, subjects were exposed to four times more natural light, on average, than those who lived their normal lives. "After exposure to the natural light dark cycle, melatonin levels were low just before the volunteers woke up, suggesting our brain is starting to promote wakefulness after we have been exposed to these natural cues," Wright told the BBC. Still, if you'd rather pass on tents and bug spray, the study does offer some useful advice for your everyday life. "We can achieve earlier bedtimes by having people be outside more, especially in the morning," Wright told NPR. "You could start your day with a morning walk. Raise the shades in the house. Or if you read the newspaper, do it outside." "On the flip side," he added, "reduce exposure to light at night by dimming the lights or computers. This is especially important within the hour prior before bedtime."