Mimicking the Ocean: Critical Challenges in Scaffold Design and Tissue Texturization for Cell-Cultured Seafood

Cellular aquaculture offers a sustainable solution to global seafood demand, yet the production of high-value, whole-cut fillets is hindered by the "texture gap," the inability to replicate the complex, anisotropic architecture of native fish muscle and its collagenous myosepta. This critical review addresses this challenge by evaluating the necessary paradigm shift from reductionist mammalian-centric tissue engineering to marine-biomimetic scaffolding strategies. We systematically analyze the efficacy of marine-derived biomaterials, such as cold-water fish skin collagen, sponge chitin, and algal polysaccharides, demonstrating their superior capacity to meet the distinct metabolic and thermal requirements of piscine cells. Our analysis reveals that advanced fabrication technologies, including electrospinning, cryo-templating, and 3D bioprinting, successfully achieve the micro-scale alignment necessary for myotome mimicry, though macroscopic scalability remains a current industrial bottleneck. Furthermore, we establish that structural fidelity must be coupled with sensoric integration; incorporating marine protein hydrolysates and lipid co-cultures significantly enhances umami intensity and authentic mouthfeel, as validated by electronic sensory analytics. To translate these advancements into commercial viability, the cellular seafood industry must transition from chemical crosslinking to food-grade enzymatic alternatives. By integrating circular bioeconomy principles specifically, valorizing seafood processing waste to secure affordable scaffold materials this review provides a strategic roadmap for scaling structurally accurate, sensorically authentic, and economically competitive cell-cultured seafood products.