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Artificial Jellyfish Built From Silicone and Rat Cells
ananyo writes "Bioengineers have made an artificial jellyfish using silicone and muscle cells from a rat's heart. The synthetic creature, dubbed a medusoid, looks like a flower with eight petals. When placed in an electric field, it pulses and swims exactly like its living counterpart. The team now plans to build a medusoid using human heart cells. The researchers have filed a patent to use their design, or something similar, as a platform for testing drugs (abstract). 'You've got a heart drug?' says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. 'You let me put it on my jellyfish, and I'll tell you if it can improve the pumping.'" The video that accompanies the text is at once beautiful and creepy.
As a creationist, I find this offensive.
Of course, you still need to test for side effects. Is a drug hepatotoxic?
'You've got a heart drug?' says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. 'You let me put it on my jellyfish, and I'll tell you if it can improve the pumping.'"
Couldn't they, I dunno, just put it in a rat?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This is called a "metroid", not a "medusoid".
the artificial jellyfish will (eventually) be made of human heart cells, which will allow for different research vectors for heart medicine
I wonder how they taste fried........
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Turn in your nerd card at the front desk. NOW.
Yes. In an extraordinarily limited and uninteresting way.
O brave new world, That has such people in't!
The jelly moves through the water. In the heart the water moves through the jelly. Same basic action. Imagine the same device being built using human cells, especially cells from the potential patient, this chimeric pump is a first step, perhaps a major step, in building a bioelectric replacement heart or even an auxiliary heart. They sussed that bioelectric pumps work by sending an electrochemical wave front through the tissue. In principal a jellyfish and a heart have a lot in common. Especially in some people.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Better call Samus.
sudo eat my shorts
There has been some research already that offers a potential there: Growing cells onto a temporary scaffold. It's still many years away from being able to grow a heart in a lab from a patient's own cells, but the possibility is there. Simpler organs are already in use that way - trachea, bladder, some others - but hearts are much more difficult. You'd still need a pacemaker though, an artificially grown heart isn't going to contain the required nerves to keep everything contracting in sync without one.
Now I know what will be on SciFi Channel this Fall. On the bright side it'll be a break from all the ghost shows and wrestling.
Finally! Science has found a way to bridge the gap between aquatic life outside of the vertebrates, and members of order rodentia. Soon, the seas will team with jellyrats, and sewers will overflow with rodentfish! A glorious day!
Dr. Ichthius will be very pleased. Yes. Very. Pleased.
Muahahahah!!!
(I decided to pass on the opportunity to write "Well, I for one WELCOME our new Jellyrat overlords...)
Why not?
This isn't about making artificial jellyfish, it's about creating new organisms made out of both organic and inorganic material. Regardless of use, I think this is rather awesome.
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Except that the heart's natural pacemakers aren't nervous, but specialized muscle cells:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA_node
The nervous system is capable of speeding the main pacemaker, but that connection isn't necessary to keep the heart beating. And the pacemakers are redundant, set at different frequencies. The highest frequency pacemaker drives the rest; should it fail, the next slower one takes over.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Ok, who wouldn't want to tell people that they worked on "The Medusoid Project?"
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
It's far from a new organism. So far it's not much different from a frog corpse that moves because it's being zapped.
I doubt it self repairs itself (e.g. if you destroy one part, the other cells around will reproduce and rebuild what you destroyed). When the cells somehow help rebuild the new entity, then it is a new multicellular organism. When we've figured out how the cells figure out what and where to build, and control that, then we'll have made a lot of progress.
Even some single cells can repair themselves.
Same thing though - that biology evolved to grow a tiny embryonic heart and slowly make it bigger. Forcing cells to grow into a new adult heart using a scaffold isn't going to get even those specialised muscle cells aren't going to end up in the right places.
I'm waitin' for the Peanutbutter & Jelly fish...
As a human being, this announcement is without a doubt extra creepy. However, as a scientist, it's fricking awesome! As a mad scientist, I'm giving it three thumbs up.
Takes a moment to get past the "we made an artificial jellyfish (WHY? Don't we have enough of those transparent, swimming, stinging masses of doom?)," and to get onto the real meat of the article: artificial hearts that can be used to test the effectiveness of various experimental drugs without putting human beings at risk.
For a moment there, I thought the DoD had thought of something truly terrifying.
I am John Hurt.
It's a small part, but it's an important one. You need to check if a potential drug can make the muscle cell work differently (mostly for drugs targeting heart cells: pump stronger).
A human heart could react in a different way. But on the other hand, this jelly fish would have a better reaction than a simple isolated cell on a petri dish.
The petri dish cell is mostly only useful to test for basic molecular response (does the ion flux increase across the cell-wall transporter when the drug is bound to it ?)
With platform like the jelly fish you can also test the effect - like cell contraction.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Silicone boobs with mode select buttons? I for one welcome our new DOA physics enhanced overlords.
is arguably the big problem of biology. As a student I had a two-hour discussion on an airplane on the subject with one of the professors at my school -- in 1973. The goal is nearer thirty years later, but far from being realized. The work with scaffolds and viruses is awesome. But until this problem is solved I agree that you would certainly have to stimulate your bio-synthetic heart with a pacemaker.
And, hey, I'm no spring chicken. Any biologists out there working on this better log off Slashdot and get back to work.
You heard me, bitches. I mean NOW!
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy