Lab-grown meat might finally get cheap enough to buy because we've figured out how to feed it a 'soup' made from lab-grown bacteria.
April 13, 2026
Original Paper
Engineered Vibrio natriegens lysate can replace multiple components of cell culture media
bioRxiv · 10.64898/2026.04.09.717582
The Takeaway
One of the biggest costs in cultivated meat is the expensive serum used to feed the cells. By using common bacteria to create a cheap replacement, scientists have cleared a major hurdle to making lab-grown steaks a reality.
From the abstract
Reducing the cost and environmental impact of cell culture media is an important goal for cultivated meat, the process of generating meat in vitro using proliferating animal cells. While prior approaches have demonstrated the use of microbial lysates to replace expensive animal-based fetal bovine serum (FBS) in media, these formulations still rely on large quantities of growth factors such as fibroblast-like growth factor 2 (FGF2). Here, we demonstrate the use of FGF2-expressing Vibrio natriegen