--- title: "Gene Hackers Create Meatball From Resurrected Mammoth Meat" description: "Vow, an Australian cultured meat company, wants you to know that it's made a meatball out of mammoth meat which may or may not be tasty." date: "2023-03-28" modified: "2023-03-28" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/mammoth-meatball" categories: - "Cybersecurity" - "Future Society" - "Hacking" tags: - "lab grown meat" - "the digest" - "wooly mammoth" --- # Gene Hackers Create Meatball From Resurrected Mammoth Meat ![Vow, an Australian cultured meat company, wants you to know that it's made a meatball out of mammoth meat which may or may not be tasty.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Flesh Stunt You've heard of attempts to [resurrect extinct animals](), but this one might make your stomach turn. Vow, an Australian cultivated meat company, has cooked up in its lab one of the most exotic and downright bizarre sources of protein your taste buds could ever relish: mammoth meatballs. And no, "mammoth" isn't a descriptor of its size. We truly mean a meatball made from the flesh of a wooly mammoth — or at least, an approximation of it. If that's turning your head, well, that's the point. Vow wants to raise awareness of lab grown meat as a tasty and cruelty-free alternative to the real deal, not to mention one that's less environmentally destructive. In this regard, the choice of a mammoth is meant to symbolize the loss of wildlife to humans and climate change. A potent and rousing symbol, if only undermined by the fact that it comes in the form of a weighty meatball. "We need to start rethinking how we get our food. My biggest hope for this project is... that a lot more people across the world begin to hear about cultured meat," James Ryall, Vow's chief scientific officer, [told *CNN*](). ## Frankenmeat As far as food goes, this is about as Frankenstein of a creation as it gets. First, Vow scientists grabbed the mammoth DNA sequence for myoglobin, a skeletal muscle protein found in mammals, and then filled in the gaps using elephant DNA. To culture the meat, the scientists inserted the mammoth myoglobin sequence into the stem cells of muscle from a sheep. From there, they let the cells grow for a few weeks and voilà: mammoth meat, approximately. And for the scientists involved, there's nothing sheepish about using lamb cells. The meatball, they say, is still mostly mammoth. "From a genomic point of view, it's only one gene amongst all the other sheep genes that is mammoth," Ernst Wolvetang, senior group leader at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, told *CNN*. "It's one gene out of 25,000." ## Not For Human Consumption If you have your reservations about eating meat from an animal that's supposed to have been dead for thousands for years, you're in good company. Vow scientists don't want to risk eating it either. "I've got no idea what the potential allergenicity might be of this particular protein," Ryall said. "It's not going to go up for sale, because we've got no idea about the safety profile of this particular product." But believe it or not, a veritable mammoth meat connoisseur exists, and he says he'd love to take one for the team and give the meatball a taste. "Without doubt I would love to try this!" Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University who ate a piece of frozen baby mammoth during an expedition in Sibera, told *CNN*. While Vow won't be peddling mammoth meat to customers (with the possible exception of Dalen), it does want to get its other products, like cultured quail meat, into restaurants. Singapore is a hopeful target, where lab meat has [already been approved]() for human consumption. **More on lab meat:** *[Scientists Say They Can Make Delicious Lab-Grown Fat, Weave It Into Fake Bacon]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()