haha wtf were they using instead?!?!

Fetuses, of course.

Muscles made from cow cells could make lab-grown burgers*

Fixed the title.

They’ve been using cow muscle cells, but just as unassociated cells or very thin fibers. Now they’re making the muscle cells turn into actual muscle tissue. It’s the difference between a smooth ground beef vs. a steak

This still seems far from a steak, what they’ve made seems more akin to coarser ground meat whereas the single cell stuff they make in bioreactors is more of a paste that theyll add some sort of filler to to give it structure. Still an upgrade but it remains to be seen whether it will scale.

My butt cells, but the fat content was too high

The title is still off.

The breakthrough is about using a “three-molecule cocktail” to grow functional cow muscle with thick fibers whereas previous methods could only grow thin fibers. The lab can grow meat that more closely resemble regular beef because the cells differentiate better, producing other necessary proteins that allows it to contract using those fibers for support.

Crazy that this finding comes from basic research into muscle diseases in rats.