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posted by CoolHand on Friday April 17 2015, @01:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the making-the-hippies-happy dept.

Wired has a profile of "Real Vegan Cheese", a product emerging from Counter Culture Labs in Oakland, California. The DIY/biotech lab is using genetically modified yeast cells to produce 11 proteins normally found in cow's milk, which can then be used to create synthetic cheese.

The genetic engineering approach to cheese has been enabled by the rapidly falling cost of DNA synthesis. It now costs less than $0.25 per base pair to obtain a custom DNA sequence which can be delivered by mail. Why make vegan cheese using yeast? Cheesemaking is an artisanal process with centuries of history and one of the earliest examples of human-directed microbiology. Existing plant-based vegan cheeses can't reproduce the casein proteins needed to achieve a passable cheese. However, Real Vegan Cheese will not use animal fat or lactose.

The process is not limited to bovine cheese:

When I visit the lab, I discover the cheese team includes a biologist, a bioethicist, a retired clinical psychologist, an accountant, and a former Apple marketer. "This to me is a natural extension of computer culture," says Maria Chavez, the ex-Apple employee and a leader of the vegan cheese project. "What is bigger to hack than our bodies and our environment? It's one of the last big frontiers. The possibilities are exciting."

The possibilities include not just vegan cow cheese, but, well, vegan human cheese. The same basic process for synthesizing cow's milk applies to milk from any other mammal. You just need different genes. Cheese made from engineered human breast milk may not sound like a top seller at the deli counter. But the team says it can serve a practical purpose: Human milk cheese could offer an option to people who have allergies to non-human dairy products. (Chavez said the group has put its experiments with human milk on hold due to Food and Drug Administration concerns about possible autoimmune reactions.)

The team is also attempting to create a narwhal cheese, after achieving the stretch goal on Indiegogo. The recipe and experiments involved will be released as "open source"; the DNA sequence(s) will be submitted to iGEM's Registry of Standard Biological Parts.

Critics of synthetic foods worry about the use of GMOs and the lightly regulated nature of biotechnology labs and hackerspaces. The Real Vegan Cheese team notes that the cheese itself isn't a GMO, only the yeast is. Other recent forays into synthetic food include Muufri's synthetic milk, and Evolva's vanilla/vanillin and saffron substitutes.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @03:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @03:17PM (#172070)
    I've never found vegans to be very logically consistent. Given the number of dead insects on the front of motor vehicles, no true vegan should ever drive or even ride in a car. But insect lives don't matter...
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @03:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @03:28PM (#172075)

    I've never found people to be very logically consistent. People make choices based on many things and rationalize afterwards.
    Many vegans try to do the least harm. There is also plenty of animal death (mainly rodents) when crops are being harvested.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @05:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @05:56PM (#172123)

    Speaking of insects, there is a huge source of low-fat protein that is virtually untapped in "Western" culture. People in Europe or North America who routinely eat escargot, crab or lobster, react with horror when presented with say fried ant or grasshopper, or sauteed cricket. How about grilled scorpion, or boiled grubs. I've tasted all of these in Mexico and Central America and South Asia where they are part of the local cuisine.
    Don't know if insects are considered vegetarian or carnivorous, probably not vegan. But still way down on the food chain, and way less costly (in both land and environmental uses) to produce than beef, lamb or pork.