This jellyfish was made in the labs of Harvard University. They took the cells from a rats heart and grew a single layer of muscle over a patterned sheet of elastic silicone, which gives the ‘jellyfish’ shape. They then run an electric current through the structure which contracts the muscle. By releasing the current the silicone returns to the normal ‘flat’ shape and thus giving the creature propulsion through the water. Watch the video to see this creepy man-made jellyfish in action.
“It’s Alive”
However this isn’t a Franken-jellyfish as it’s not technically ‘alive’, showing only one of the seven biological signs of life. Kevin Kit Parker, a bioengineer at Harvard University who led the jellyfish-building effort said:
“It’s a biohybrid robot. It’s part animal, it’s part synthetic material,”
The End of Animal Testing?
The idea behind the development of synthetic life is that it may one day replace real ‘live’ animals in animal testing facilities across the world.
Artificial Hearts
The movement of the jellyfish using an electric current could one day be used to produce artificial pumps for heart transplants. Theoretically and some way into the future, we could order a replacement heart and have one grown for us using our own cells.
[Sources: Gizmodo | Animal Planet | Wikipedia | Live Science ]