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Engineers Implant Vascularized 3D Muscles

Posted by timothy on from the one-step-toward-vat-meat dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A big hurdle to creating "replacement parts" for the human body is the lack of an internal, nourishing blood system in engineered tissues. Using a stem cell "cocktail," researchers say they've now overcome that, and successfully implanted engineered muscles in lab animals. Next stop, genuine implantable pecs?"

3 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Downsides... by drightler · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Humans are way more energy efficient than cars. Assuming a human could run at 60mph, and assuming gasoline could be comsumed rather than food:

    1 gallon of gasoline contains 33000 kCal (calories).
    A human burns 0.653 kCal (calories) per mile per pound of body weight.
    Assume a 200 pound man.

    200 * .653 * 60 = 7836 kCal (calories). This is about 23.75% of a gallon. About 252.68 miles/gallon.

    --

    blah blah blah....
    drightler@technicalogic.com
  2. Re:Downsides... by dmaduram · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just as a fyi, if you're interested in swapping muscles with a different species, you'd probably be better off using the rat IIb fast-twitch myosin muscle filament, instead of the cheetah.

    There was a great article about gene therapy & interspecies muscle filament switching a few years ago in Scientific American, and they noted that switching muscles with another species could be problematic under duress, because the resultant strain on the quadriceps could physically rip out the hamstring, patella tendon, and tibia bone, eventually causing the quadriceps to shoot up the femur.

    Muscle, Genes and Athletic Performance. Andersen, Jesper L.; Schjerling, Peter; Saltin, Bengt. Scientific American, Sep2000, Vol. 283 Issue 3, p48
  3. Growable meat by AmicoToni · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Growing muscle tissue on demand actually means growing meat. Which can be edible meat.

    Is the science-fiction scenario of growing meat without farming closer? It sure would represent a whole new source of high-quality, "ethically correct" proteins.

    But would you eat such a thing?