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Chinese researchers have created a new gelatin using genes that produce human collagen and inserting them into yeast. The yeast then produce human-derived gelatin.

Given the supermarket shelf space devoted to Jell-O, and the undergraduate brain-space devoted to jello shots, a new type of gelatin might not seem that necessary in the world.

But it actually has many medical uses where animal-derived products can be problematic. Gelatin is made from denatured collagen. It’s used to make drug capsules and in other medical applications. Almost all of it is made from animal products, generally the bones and skin of cattle and pigs. That can be a problem for people with allergies and carries concern about the transfer of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

For that reason, scientists in Beijing have been working on a substitute that can’t trigger immune responses in humans because it’s derived from humans and produced in a microbial expression system – yeast.