Umami Meats Partners with TripleBar to Accelerate Development of Farmed Fish Cell Lines
Triplebar, a biotechnology company, and Umami Meats, a farmed seafood company, have signed a letter of intent to collaborate on developing cell lines for sustainable farmed seafood, starting with Japanese eel according to a release posted to Spoon.
Triplebar uses a microfluidics platform that says it can process thousands of complex tests per second with the sound signals of a fluid handling robot. According to Triplebar CEO Maria Cho, these tests are processed using what she calls microreactors.
“The way to think about this is that we’re taking a test tube, and we’re taking it smaller in this microreactor that’s much smaller than a human hair,” Cho told Spoon. “And we can put the thing we want to test in this microreactor, and then the assay reagent tests the thing we want.”
With Umami, that “thing” they will look at is whether the cell line has the necessary characteristics to grow in a bioreactor versus an animal. That animal, in this case, is eel, or unagi, the most popular fish in Japanese cuisine around the world. Unfortunately, due to its popularity, unagi has become endangered due to overfishing. Although most unagi available for human consumption is now produced through aquaculture, eel fish farms are incredibly inefficient due to the voracious nature of eels (researchers say it takes 2.5 tons of wild fish to make 1 ton of eel).
In explaining how the Triplebar platform works compared to traditional testing, Cho uses the analogy of the evolution of microprocessors. He says the company fits his microreactors on a chip that fits in the palm of your hand. That chip can process thousands of tests per second, millions per day, orders of magnitude more than tests performed by humans or liquid-handling robots. This increase is similar to the way a microprocessor works compared to early computer technology.
In their partnership with Umami, Cho says they will look at how small changes in the genome produce the desired effect in a cell line.
“We take each base in the genome and make a change in each genome,” Cho said. “And then, we go over that number to see what combination of mutations gives that final trait that we’re looking for, in this case, which is the cells that grow in the womb versus the animals.”
As for Umami, while its partnership with Triplebar will focus on eel, the company has plans to expand the partnership to other types of fish. Umami says its “standard” production system works with different types of fish, and the company says its platform will enable the production of farmed fish in different production areas that suit local tastes. The company, which first launched fish ball laksa last year in Singapore, says its product roadmap prioritizes IUCN Red Listed endangered species, especially those that are not suitable for large-scale aquaculture and face growing demand.
