In which one void prepares to clone and eat themself.

Reiterating some backstory: I am a long-time vegan with an uncanny taste for flesh. The only way to satisfy this craving within my ethical bounds is to get consent, which requires it be human meat. I've eaten myself once in a one-off fashion, the details of which are outside the scope of this project. I aim to make this undertaking reproducible, by using my own cells, fed with my own blood, to create a home-grown "lab meat".

I first evaluated the viability of home-grown lab meat in this blog post a few months back.

I've since organized some resources, and am beginning to pick up materials to actually make it happen. My primary resource for this undertaking is the Shojinmeat Project. As touched upon in the last post, they are a Japanese nonprofit aiming to engage youth in bio sciences and make home-grown lab meat possible and accessible. They have published a number of invaluable guides and lists of materials. Here's a big comprehensive slideshow introducing the concepts, as well as highlighting some of the challenges and approaches to overcome them.

Here's their document describing the process.

They've also prepared a huge list of equipment and ingredients (document is only in Japanese; I had a copy translated).

In my head there are three main challenges in seeing the project through to fruition:

• Cells
• Media
• Environment

Let's start at the end: Environment

A bioreactor will be needed. Having years of background in fermentation and homebrewing, I have somewhat of a head start here. I'm using this "DIY incubator" guide as the basis for my own construction. I have a bacteriological incubator I intend to use as a starting point, and mostly need to add CO₂ feed and monitoring and necessary servos (I also have CO₂ gear already).

Media

The introductory slideshow includes some slides on the cost barriers of typical sustenance for cultures of these types. Fetal Bovine Serum is mentioned and dismissed for cost reasons, but I furthermore disqualify it for being animal-derived, and thus falling outside the vegan aspect of the project. I have access to gear for blood draws and a centrifuge, and aim to extract my own serum—I don't expect it to be 'drop-in', but I think I can supplement it to usability. Plus, it's metal as hell. While I don't have an exact recipe for the medium nailed down yet, following the guides suggests serum + DMEM + some other goodies will get me close enough. They provide some ingredients and rationales in this document.

Cells

This might be the hard one. Source cells can be found for purchase online. This is probably the easiest approach. But what fun is that‽ Muscle cells seem to be preferred for this sort of growth. I think a natural starting point is tongue. After all, why stop at two tongues? The provided readings have some indication on isolating/differentiating cells for culturing, but I do expect this will be the most difficult part to execute in an amateur lab. Further work might involve decellularizing some scaffolding to give the culture some structure (à la 'meat berry', thanks Thought Emporium), but for initial runs I'm okay with a puddle of tongue.

I need to order the Arduino and CO₂ sensor and servos. Then I have a bit of time to nail down my approach for cells and firm up a media recipe. More to come!