MIT Researchers Grow Beating Heart Tissue

Iphtashu Fitz writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report that they have been able to grow heart tissue the size of a dime from cells harvested from rats. When an electrical impulse is passed through the tissue it twitches like a beating heart. This represents the first time scientists have succeeded in using an electrical current to produce dense heart tissue that beats in a rhythm mimicking that of a live animal's heart. The next step for the researchers is to patch damaged hearts of other rats to see if it can behave like a cardiac bandage. If successful this could eventually lead to treatments for heart attacks and other cardiac diseases that can damage and kill large amounts of heart muscle cells."

Comments

Um, no

[Apreche]

The next phase is myomer. The fictional "muscles" used in Battletech 'mech construction. They are supposedly strong fibers that expand and contract when you pass current through them, or something to that effect.

Giant robots here we come!

Rats == Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

So they can take a bunch of rat neurons and hook them up to a flight simulator and teach it (them?) to fly with success. Now we've got heart parts from rat cells. Awesome. I for one welcome Pinky and the Brain. Ruling, er.