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9h ago

Scientists Engineered Lettuce and Tobacco to Make Animal Muscle Protein

The team showed stable, heritable chloroplast expression of pig myoglobin and identified lack of heme as the key barrier to matching meat levels.

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Researchers plan to extract the protein from the leaves, purify it, and then add it as an ingredient into plant-based meat alternatives | Representative Image
A new study shows tobacco and lettuce can produce myoglobin, bringing plant-grown meat closer while reducing emissions and water use.

Overview

  • Researchers reported on Thursday that they used a gene‑gun to insert optimized pig myoglobin genes into chloroplast genomes of lettuce and tobacco and grew plants that passed the trait to their offspring.
  • Quantitative tests found about 800 mg of myoglobin per kilogram dry weight in tobacco and 810 mg/kg in lettuce, roughly one‑tenth the concentration found in animal muscle.
  • Detailed analysis showed the engineered myoglobin folded correctly but frequently lacked its heme cofactor, which the authors named as the principal technical bottleneck to producing fully assembled, meat‑like protein.
  • The modified plants tolerated myoglobin production with no major loss of health or fertility, supporting two possible paths forward: leaf extraction and purification for use as an ingredient or direct use of biofortified lettuce pending regulatory approval.
  • Next steps include engineering plant heme biosynthesis or transport, improving yields and purification methods, and navigating safety and food‑law review while industry partners such as Kyomei explore scale‑up and commercial viability.