And even if it wasn't just what they added, 8% more doesn't seem much improvement.

If the 8% increase refers to the standard amount of protein in rice, we are talking around 2 grams more protein per kg. Not exactly Earth shattering.

Still, worth bearing in mind that this is a proof of concept, not something a company is looking to scale up into production as-is.

I tried reading the paper [1], but my layman eyes couldn't find anything that could be used to calculate the actual delta, in an obvious way. I see increases mentioned, but it's not clear that the coating was zeroed out (or needed to be).

Anyone?

Hey if that protein comes from a thing that people don't want to eat that still seems like a win.

I'm guessing this is more of a proof of concept of the use of rice as a substrate for stem cells than anything.

"Marine collagen" is basically fish gelatin with some extra processing steps, and based on price and availability it appears to have growing demand in recent years as a specialty nutrition product. So there is already some interest in this protein source.