Lab-Grown Meat Progress, Early Human Migration Updates. January 13, 2023, Part 1

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🗓️ 13 January 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

Early Migration To North America Likely Wasn’t A One-Way Road

The story of how early humans migrated to North America might not be as simple as we once thought. The prevailing theory was that ancient peoples traveled from Siberia to modern-day Alaska using the Bering strait as a land bridge. But new genomic research, published in Current Biology, reveals movement in the opposite direction, back to Asia, as well.

Ira talks with Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, about the new research, and other top science stories of the week, including a new AI voice generator, a green comet visible visit in the night sky for the first time in 50,000 years, and how a specific atmospheric weather pattern caused historic flooding in California.

Lab-Grown Meats Are Finally Inching Closer To Commercial

The United States is one of the largest consumers of meat in the world, with the average American eating 273 pounds of meat per year That’s not to say that tastes aren’t changing: Nearly a quarter of Americans say they have cut down on meat consumption, and 41% of Americans under 50 have tried plant-based meat.

There’s been a wave of companies and academic institutions working on cellular agriculture—a fancy way of saying animal products grown from cells in labs, and not from a meat farm. While lab-grown meat is not available in grocery stores yet, the FDA gave approval to make meat from animal cell culture for the first time in November. Upside Foods, the company making the product, makes chicken from cells grown in tanks.

Joining Ira to talk about cell agriculture are Andrew Stout, cellular agriculture biologist based in Boston, Massachusetts, and Aryé Elfenbein, co-founder of Wildtype, based in San Francisco, California, a company working on growing seafood from cells.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday, I'm I Replayed O.
0:02.4	A bit later in the hour, we're going to talk about the future of lab-grown meat.
0:07.1	We'll take your calls. Would you eat lab-grown meat?
0:10.7	What are your thoughts on this? Call us 844-724-255, or you can tweet us at Sci-Fi.
0:18.1	But first, the story of how early humans migrated to North America just got a little bit more
0:24.0	complicated and interesting. You probably remember the story pretty well.
0:29.1	Early humans living in what is now Siberia, across the Bearing Strait, into modern day Alaska.
0:34.8	And here's where it gets even more interesting.
0:37.6	Because new genomic research shows movement in the opposite direction too.
0:43.4	These early migrants traveled back again to Asia.
0:47.2	Joining me now to explain this fascinating new research and other top science stories of the week
0:52.2	is Sophie Bushwick, Technology Editor at Scientific America and here in New York.
0:56.9	Sophie, welcome back. Always good to see you on Science Friday.
0:59.6	Thank you. It's good to see you for the first time in 2023.
1:02.2	That's happy new year to you.
1:04.1	Let's talk about this. What's the new information we're learning here?
1:07.6	So researchers took the remains of 10 individuals from what is now Siberia, that area of the world.
1:14.8	And they did a genetic analysis. And these are the remains of humans who lived at various periods of time.
1:19.6	The oldest ones are about 7,500 years old.
1:22.5	And they just, yeah, they tested their genes. They said, like, who are your ancestors?
1:26.0	And they found evidence that the population, that they had Native American genes.
1:30.6	And this suggests that there were not one, but multiple times when Native Americans either crossed over
	...

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