Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
July 24, 2012
CREDIT: Harvard University and Caltech: A bioengineered jellyfish mimic swims in ocean-like saltwater. Researchers reported the creation of these mimic July 22, 2012 in the journal Nature Biotechnology.Using rat heart cells and silicone polymer, researchers have bioengineered a “jellyfish” that knows how to swim.
The odd jellyfish mimic, dubbed a “Medusoid” by its creators, is more than a curiosity. It’s a natural biological pump, just like the human heart. That makes it a good model to use to study cardiac physiology, said study researcher Kevin Kit Parker, a bioengineer at Harvard University.
“The idea is to look at a muscular pump other than the heart or other muscular organ and see if there are some fundamental similarities, or design principles, that are conserved across them,” Parker told LiveScience. “This study revealed that there are.”
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