Fifteen years ago the SIM annual meeting had loads of talks dealing with natural products (I knew the S. coelicolor ActI gene sequence by heart) and there was barely a talk on fuel ethanol to be found. Now there are plenty of biofuel talks to go along with a healthy dose of natural products (and I no longer remember the ActI sequence). So it begs the question, what will we be listening to at the 2025 annual meeting. As I look into my crystal ball, the answer is…. in vitro meat cultivation.

These are meat products that are grown using tissue culture technologies in the lab and TIME magazine identified in vitro meat production as one of the top 50 breakthrough ideas of 2009. This is not a vegetable protein-imitation; it is a product derived from culturing real animal muscle tissue cells. Unfortunately we are not talking filet mignon or porter house; the product would be more like hamburger.

The benefits of in vitro meat cultivation include: ease of feeding a larger population, limited land use, more efficient water use, well defined quality, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced fuel vs. food decision making for food production. During this past summer, a small group of scientists met in Gothenburg, Sweden (organized by Chalmers University of Technology and the European Science Foundation) to review the technology components necessary to reduce this concept to practice. This included discussions on cell lines and culture medium nutrients derived from photosynthetic organisms such as cyanobacteria.

So at the 2025 annual meeting, a company may not simply provide money for the banquet, they may produce the entrée.

Essayons!

About Neal Connors
Dr. Neal Connors is currently the owner/president of Phoenix BioConsulting, LLC (www.phoenixbioconsulting.com); a company providing consulting services to the fermentation, industrial microbiology, biotechnology, and legal sectors.