ABSTRACT Cultured meat relies on biomaterial scaffolds that not only sustain cell proliferation but also regulate lineage commitment and tissue maturation. Increasing evidence shows that the biophysical properties of biomaterials—such as stiffness, incorporated force fields, wettability, surface charge, and geometry—profoundly influence gene expression through mechanotransduction and epigenetic remodeling pathways. This review outlines how these material‐driven cues modulate myogenic and adipogenic programs relevant to meat engineering, and how their integration with synthetic biology enables programmable control of cell fate. Emerging strategies including 4D‐adaptive scaffolds, high‐throughput material–gene mapping, and AI‐guided scaffold design are discussed as future directions. Collectively, these advances establish the concept of a “material genome”, providing a rational framework to engineer structured, nutritious, and scalable cultured meat.
Liu et al. (Mon,) studied this question.