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Cellular Agriculture, building a new industry, what Kate works on, how she got started, new research, and how to get involved.
About Kate
“Kate began working in cellular agriculture as an intern at Perfect Day Foods (formerly Muufri) developing strategies to make milk proteins. She has a background in protein biochemistry and cell biology, and completed her PhD in May 2017.
While in graduate school, she created and instructed at Clones to Crystals, an 8-week undergraduate laboratory course covering the basics of cloning, protein purification, and crystallization trials. She also co-founded and ran Learn to Code, a data science bootcamp for women, teaching 50+ students the basics of data science and software development in Python. Her research focused on how insects use their immune systems to fight disease, particularly the biochemistry of thioester containing proteins (TEPs), a family of insect immune proteins. She has extensive research experience in biochemistry, structural biology, and cell biology.
She holds a PhD in Cell Biology from Yale University and an AB in Biochemistry from Mount Holyoke College, and is a proud native of Federal Way, Washington. She is can often be found hiking or brewing hard cider.” Source
About New Harvest
“By applying advances in tissue engineering and synthetic biology to growing food, we can revolutionize the supply chain of animal products to continue to provide affordable and sustainable food to a growing population. We call this “cellular agriculture.” Thanks to cellular agriculture, we can produce eggs, milk, meat, and more without intensive crop and animal farming. Unfortunately, this nascent field is not well supported by existing research funding mechanisms. This is where New Harvest comes in.” Source
Social media links( Twitter, Facebook, Instagram)
Time stamp Show notes
- [ 02:20 ] Why she choose Cellular Agriculture and New Harvest, and how she found her way into New Harvest (i.e. Starting at Perfect Day). Also, she gets into what she is doing now.
- [ 05:55 ] How she describes New Harvest, and the benefits of having a non-profit organization pushing and developing Cellular Agriculture. How the process of innovation happens with drugs, which is a good analogy to what they are trying to do.
- [ 07:00 ] How cellular agriculture and lab meat is similar to Solar.
- [ 07:45 ] Their funding, other funding in the space, and the benefits of having New Harvest working on creating open-sourced patents and technologies.
- [ 08:50 ] Some of the specific things that New Harvest does to promote the industry (i.e. training, etc).
- [ 10:10 ] What we can do to be helpful in creating this new industry.
- [ 10:55 ] An online course that they are developing.
- [ 11:40 ] Her thoughts on people making weird meat or stuff with this technology, like Gringotts jelly beans.
- [ 12:25 ] The types of meat she has heard people are interested in culturing.
- [ 13:10 ] How tissue engineering will benefit from the research they are doing.
- [ 13:45 ] What her daily life is like (i.e. NASA talk about food systems, etc).
- [ 15:30 ] How the research is going, expanding their research team, and the latest research that is coming out of the lab (i.e. decellularizing apples to grow cells on that, what likes to grow on that type of matrix, or Bioreactors and how they work).
- [ 18:05 ] How Bioreactors make meat from noodle structures.
- [ 18:30 ] If today is like Star Trek’s building of things (i.e. skin graphs with skin guns).
- [ 19:25 ] Anything in the media that really captures what lab meat and cellular agriculture could be. (Shojin meat project).
- [ 20:20 ] Art helping tell a story of cellular agriculture.
- [ 21:28 ] Continuing with new research discussions and advances.
- [ 21:45 ] Her thoughts on Fetal Bovine Serum and why she/New Harvest want to develop a serum to replace it.
- [ 25:30 ] Decellularizing apples, and how some lab meat doesn’t need to be species specific, and her thoughts on other scaffold types.
- [ 25:45 ] The progress on new serum to replace Fetal Bovine Serum.
- [ 27:20 ] How international meat and the science world in general is.
- [ 28:15 ] What things is she a nerd about (i.e. favorite generation of Star Trek or brewing).
- [ 30:23 ] In regards to grants and partnerships, what type of people do best in their programs (See this page to apply for check them out). Also, the upcoming conference they have going on in the Boston region (Click here to check it out).
- [ 32:25 ] What are the best ways that we as listeners can be supportive of the industry and New Harvest (i.e. Newsletter, which is on their website, and donations). Also, how to get special cutting edge information and updates (i.e. Pre-publication data)!
- [ 33:26 ] Social media links (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram)