Behold, the artificial jellyfish
Building on recent advances in marine biomechanics, materials science, and tissue engineering, a team of researchers at Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has turned inanimate silicon and living cardiac muscle cells into a freely swimming “jellyfish.” The development 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 focused on replicating life’s building blocks. The researchers’ method for building the tissue-engineered “jellyfish,” dubbed “Medusoid,” was published in Nature Biotechnology on July 22. An authority on cell- and tissue-powered actuators, co-author Kevin Kit Parker previously demonstrated that bioengineered constructs can grip, pump, and even walk. The inspiration to raise the bar and mimic a jellyfish came out of Parker’s frustration with the state of the cardiac field. Akin to how a human heart moves...