A new brew: Evaluating the flavor of roasted, lab-grown coffee cells
2023-12-12
(Press-News.org) It may soon be time to wake up and smell the lab-grown coffee made from cultured plant cells. But it’s not clear whether drinks from this product replicate coffee beans’ complex flavors. Now, a study in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that some of the comforting aromas and tastes of a conventional cup of coffee could be reproduced by roasting and brewing coffee cell cultures.
Coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 23 billion pounds of beans are expected to be produced during the 2023–24 growing season. However, coffee cultivation is increasingly threatened by a warming climate because the plants grow only at specific temperatures and altitudes. Researchers have been investigating lab-grown coffee plant cells since the 1970s as an alternative to farmed beans, but little research has evaluated how laboratory products taste and smell compared to traditional beans. So, Hieko Rischer and coworkers tested how roasting coffee plant cells impacts them and the beverage made from them.
The team first cultured cells from chopped Coffea arabica leaves in a laboratory-scale bioreactor. Then the cells were freeze-dried, ground into a fine powder and roasted under three different conditions. Longer roasting times produced colors similar to dark roast coffee beans; the researchers mentioned this was important for flavor perception. Additionally, the current lab-grown powders contained twice as much caffeine as previous bioreactor coffee products, although the current powders’ levels were much lower than those in farmed beans. The team brewed beverages with the roasted cell cultures or dark roast C. arabica beans and served them to trained taste-testers. The following conclusions were drawn:
Panelists identified similar levels of bitterness and sourness in lab-grown and conventional drinks.
The new brews had more roasted, burned sugar, and smokey smells.
Some Maillard reaction products that give coffee its distinct flavor, such as guaiacol and several pyrazines, weren’t found in the cell-based drinks, though other Maillard reaction products were present.
Overall, while some tastes and smells of a typical bean-based coffee could be produced by roasting cultured cells, the researchers say that future work is needed to explore processing techniques to further boost flavor for this alternative to conventionally grown coffee.
The authors acknowledge funding from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Ltd.
###
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.
Note: ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.
Follow us: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram
END
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2023-12-12
In a Perspective, a biophysical chemist, Kenneth J. Breslauer, and his brother, a political scientist, George W. Breslauer, explore the parallelisms between the concept of stability as it is used in their respective fields. The workings of a cell or molecule are generally understood to be reducible to physics, but social and political events are thought to be structured by human agency and a generous helping of chance. However, both molecular systems and socio-political organizations can be said to exhibit stability, instability, or so-called “metastability,” a state of precarious and kinetic stability. For example, a chemical system can be metastable when molecules ...
2023-12-12
UTSA has received a two-year, $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish the National DigiFoundry (NDF), a consortium that has the potential to redefine the management of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies.
To develop the NDF, UTSA will create a new Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), a national organization that promotes engagement and collaboration between the public and private sectors. At a time when digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, have surpassed a trillion dollars in market value, this collaboration is paramount, according to John Huggins, interim executive director of UTSA’s National ...
2023-12-12
Every year in the Christmas season it becomes clear again that some people are amazingly skilled singers, like Mariah Carey and George Michael. Their singing can stir strong emotions.
Singing involves probably the most complex, and mostly hidden, movements humans and animal can make. To become a good singer, you need to learn how to coordinate the movements of hundreds of muscles in your body with extreme precision. Therefore, you need a lot of talent, and practice.
We all know that athletes invest a lot of time exercising their limb ...
2023-12-12
A new paper in Biology Methods & Protocols, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that researchers in Germany have developed a new system to display epitopes in mammal cells for immunization studies. They believe that this method can help scientists greatly in immunization efforts.
Promoting blood cells to produce antibodies against a specific viral protein is an important step in developing vaccines for human use. This can be challenging for researchers because whether the subjects develop antibodies depends on how scientists design ...
2023-12-12
Osaka, Japan – Patients with rare diseases have traditionally been the subjects of medical research. However, in recent years, their role has begun to shift from ‘research participants’ to ‘experts with a lived experience’, with some being involved in study planning, design and interpretation. Additionally they may soon be involved in helping pick the most important areas to prioritize for research.
In a study published last month in the journal Research Involvement and Engagement, researchers from Osaka University created an online space, referred to as the ‘Evidence-generating Commons’, for conversation, collaboration and ...
2023-12-12
Osaka, Japan – When you look up at the sky and see clouds of wondrous shapes, or struggle to peer through dense, hazy fog, you’re seeing the results of ‘Mie scattering’, which is what happens with light interacts with particles of a certain size. There is a growing body of research that aims to manipulate this phenomenon and make possible an array of exciting technologies.
Now, in a study recently published in Nature Communications, a multi-institutional research team including Osaka University has overcome what were thought to be fundamental limitations of how to enhance the efficiency of Mie scattering.
Researchers in the field ...
2023-12-12
Dr. Dewi Langlet, a scientist at the Evolution, Cell Biology and Symbiosis Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), studies foraminifera, single-cell organisms with shells made of calcium carbonate. He and his collaborators have shown for the first time that the burrowing of single-celled organisms in marine ecosystems affects oxygen distribution and bacterial diversity in sea sediments. Their findings have been published in the journal Biogeosciences.
Foraminifera are mostly marine organisms ...
2023-12-12
The exchange of energy and environment is inevitable in any physical system, so non-Hermitian systems that can be described by non-Hermitian Hamiltonians are ubiquitous. There are two kinds of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians, describing nonreciprocal systems with anisotropic coupling, also referred to as nonreciprocal coupling, and gain-loss systems. Three physicists won the Nobel physics prize for their discovery of topological phases and transitions in 2016. Recently, an emerging interplay of topological photonics and non-Hermitian photonics has ...
2023-12-12
DOWNOADABLE VIDEO
MIAMI, FLORIDA (EMBARGOED UNTIL MONDAY, DEC. 11, 2023 AT 8:45 P.M. ET) – Researchers conducting a Phase 2 clinical trial at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine say a new combination of antibody therapies produced a ‘surprisingly high’ response rate in patients with high-risk follicular lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Based on these initial findings – reported in an oral presentation at the 65th ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition in San Diego, California, Dec. 9-12 – the research team plans to expand the number of trial participants ...
2023-12-12
DOWNLOADABLE VIDEO IS AVAILABLE HERE
MIAMI, FLORIDA (EMBARGOED UNTIL MONDAY, DEC. 11, 2023, AT 8:45 PM ET) – CAR-T cell therapy is a safe and effective treatment for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), even for patients regarded as high risk due to comorbidities.
That’s the conclusion of a five-year analysis of results from the U.S. Lymphoma CAR-T Cell Consortium, a group of 17 academic cancer centers in the U.S. Their findings will be presented at the American Society of Hematology’s 2023 annual meeting in San Diego, Dec. 9-12.
“CAR-T has caused a paradigm shift in the treatment of patients with diffuse large B-cell ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] A new brew: Evaluating the flavor of roasted, lab-grown coffee cells
