Brazil is developing lab-grown donkey collagen to counter a global decline in donkey populations driven by rising demand for China’s traditional anti-ageing medicine, ejiao. Through the effort, scientists are aiming to deliver a scalable alternative by 2027 that could reduce slaughter and stabilise the species.At the centre of this effort is Carla Molento, a veterinarian and professor at the Federal University of Parana, who is leading a project to produce donkey collagen using precision fermentation. According to a South China Morning Post report, the method involves inserting donkey collagen DNA into microorganisms such as yeast to create a protein identical…