Jellyfish for your heart

Researchers have created silicone and living cardiac muscle cells into a freely swimming “jellyfish”, thanks to advances in marine bio-mechanics, materials science, and tissue engineering.

The finding serves as a proof of concept for reverse engineering, a variety of muscular organs and simple life forms. It also suggests a broader definition of what counts as synthetic life in an emerging field that has primarily focussed on replicating life’s building blocks.

Researchers from the Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) pioneered the method for building the tissue-engineered jellyfish, dubbed “Medusoid”, the journal Nature Biotechnology reported.

It has been found that similar to the way a human heart moves blood throughout the body, jellyfish propel themselves through the water by pumping. In figuring out how to take apart and then rebuild the primary motor function of a jellyfish, the aim was to gain new insights into how such pumps really worked.
According to Parker, professor of bioengineering and applied physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), “I started looking at marine organisms that pump to survive. Then I saw a jellyfish at the New England Aquarium and I immediately noted both similarities and differences between how the jellyfish and the human heart pump.” — IANS

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