After a Thanksgiving filled with Tofurky and Field Roasts, Americans have gotten a taste of fake meat and the data suggests that many are taking a liking to it — even McDonalds is considering a meatless burger. But whether a business is a small startup or a mega-corporation like McDonalds, developing the technology behind new meat-alternative products is so complex that it can take years.

Now, a Ginkgo Bioworks-owned startup called Motif Ingredients says that making the building blocks of meat alternatives available to innovators will free them from hard lab work and empower them to dream up the dishes of the future.

Using an automated process, Motif will work alongside its parent company, Ginkgo Bioworks, to rapidly sequence genomes and produce ingredients from microbes. After identifying vitamins and proteins in meat and animal byproducts, Motif can reproduce them using engineered yeast and bacteria in a process similar to brewing beer. The end result, it says, is a host of ingredients vital to a healthy human diet which companies producing meat-alternatives can use to create new products.

Source Credit: Futurism
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