Scientists Engineer Lettuce and Tobacco to Produce Meat Protein Myoglobin

Researchers led by Alexia Groff, a plant-biotechnology researcher at Imperial College London, used biolistic transformation (“gene gun”) to insert optimized pig myoglobin genes into the chloroplasts of lettuce (*Lactuca sativa*) and tobacco (*Nicotiana tabacum*) seedlings. The transgenes were stably inherited, and mature plants remained healthy, fertile, and photosynthetically normal. The work, published in *Frontiers in Plant Science*, demonstrates for the first time that higher plants can produce functional myoglobin, a key protein responsible for many of meat’s desirable properties.

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• Lettuce leaves yielded approximately 810 mg of myoglobin per kilogram of dry weight.

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• Tobacco leaves yielded about 800 mg per kilogram of dry weight.

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• The authors note that animal muscle contains roughly 10 times more myoglobin on a dry-weight basis.

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She also highlighted that the protein folds correctly but that “heme incorporation is incomplete,” identifying heme availability as a bottleneck for future improvements. The researchers suggest that, despite lower per-kilogram yields, the superior resource efficiency of plant cultivation could allow protein yields per hectare to rival or exceed those of conventional livestock, with substantially lower water use and greenhouse-gas emissions.

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• “One of the biggest surprises was how well the plants tolerated myoglobin production,” — Alexia Groff, first author

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• “We found that the protein folds correctly but heme incorporation is incomplete, giving us a clear direction for improving future generations of these plants,” — Alexia Groff, first author

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If the technique can be refined to increase heme incorporation and overall protein yield, plant-derived myoglobin could be extracted for use in plant-based meat alternatives or consumed directly as a novel ingredient. The approach offers a proof-of-concept for “molecular farming” of high-value food proteins, potentially reducing the environmental footprint of protein production while preserving some sensory qualities of meat. Further research will be needed to assess scalability, economic viability, and regulatory pathways before commercial adoption.

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