Educated consumers don't believe artificial meat is the solution to the problems with the meat industry

The production of in vitro meat by cell culture has been suggested by some scientists as one solution to address the major challenges facing our society. Firstly, consumers would like the meat industry to reduce potential discomfort of animals on modern farms, or even to avoid killing animals to eat them. Secondly, citizens would like meat producers to reduce potential environmental deterioration by livestock and finally, there is a need to reduce world hunger by increasing protein resources while the global population is predicted to grow rapidly. According to its promoters, artificial meat has a potential to make eating animals unnecessary, to reduce carbon footprint of meat production and to satisfy all the nutritional needs and desires of consumers and citizens. To check these assumptions, a total of 817 educated people(mainly scientists and students) were interviewed worldwide by internet in addition to 865 French educated people. We also interviewed 208 persons(mainly scientists) after an oral presentation regarding artificial meat. Results of the three surveys were similar, but differed between males and females. More than half of the respondents believed that artificial meat was feasible and realistic. However, there was no majority to think that artificial meat will be healthy and tasty, except respondents who were in favour of artificial meat. A large majority of the respondents believed that the meat industry is facing important problems related to the protection of the environment, animal welfare or inefficient meat production to feed humanity. However, respondents did not believe that artificial meat will be the solution to solve the mentioned problems with the meat industry, especially respondents who were against artificial meat. The vast majority of consumers wished to continue to eat meat even they would accept to consume less meat in a context of increasing food needs. Only a minority of respondents(from 5 to 11%) would recommend or accept to eat in vitro meat instead of meat produced from farm animals. Despite these limitations, 38 to 47% of the respondents would continue to support research on artificial meat, but a majority of them believed that artificial meat will not be accepted by consumers in the future, except for respondents who were in favour of artificial meat. We speculated that the apparent contradictory answers to this survey expressed the fact that people trust scientists whoare supposed to continuously discover new technologies potentially useful in a long term future for the human beings, but people also expressed concern for their health and were not convinced that artificial meat will be tasty, safe and healthy enough to be accepted by consumers.     

一个植物原纤维蛋白基因的克隆及其表达特性分析

植物原纤维蛋白(fibrillin, FBN)作为一大类保守的蛋白,广泛分布于植物界,但其在本氏烟(Nicotiana benthamiana)中的生物学特性和功能迄今尚不清楚。为了分析其表达特性和功能,采用RT-PCR技术从本氏烟中扩增并克隆了1个FBN基因(NbFBN)。进化树分析显示,NbFBN和拟南芥FBN1a、FBN1b的亲缘关系较近;同源分析表明,它与不同植物来源的FBN基因高度同源,其C-端部分尤为保守。定量分析发现,NbPAP在叶片和花中的表达水平较高,同时发现该基因受到干旱胁迫和激素ABA的诱导,表明该基因可能参与非生物逆境响应过程。