CrazyNeutrino said:
Scientists created a cyborg stingray powered by the heart of a rat
Researchers have developed a new kind of synthetic creature, using the heart cells of a rat to make a robotic stingray that follows light.
While the rat-ray hybrid certainly sounds like a bit of a Frankenstein mish-mash, it’s serious research that could help pave the way for a greater understanding of how hearts pump blood around the body – in addition to leading to new kinds of more sophisticated synthetic robots.
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“It struck me like a thunderbolt that I could build that system in the musculature, and that it would look very much like the muscular layer of the heart. The cyborg stingray, which weighs just 10 grams and is only about the size of a small coin, is made from a gold skeleton overlaid with a thin layer of stretchy polymer. This body, designed to emulate the shape and fins of a real ray, is coated in approximately 200,000 heart muscle cells. These muscle cells were genetically engineered to respond to light cues.”
“I want to build an artificial heart, but you’re not going to go from zero to a whole heart overnight. This is a training exercise. The heart’s built the way it is for a reason. And we’re trying to replicate as much of that function as we possibly can.”
Can you say “brilliant”?
The explanation makes perfect sense. Heart muscles are the easiest muscles to build, hearts can be kept beating out of the body by placing them in an appropriate chemical mix. This has been known for ages, and research is underway to extend the time as much as possible.
That makes making an artificial heart from a patient’s own heart cells a possibility, and eliminates any chance of immune rejection. But a heart is a complex organ, the flapping wing motion of stingray is much easier to build and observe. Hence the brilliance. I wish I’d had the brains to think of it.