Progress toward artificial tissue?
Saturday, May 16, 2009 - 07:00
in Physics & Chemistry
For modern implants and the growth of artificial tissue and organs, it is important to generate materials with characteristics that closely emulate nature. However, the tissue in our bodies has a combination of traits that are very hard to recreate in synthetic materials: It is both soft and very tough. A team of Australian and Korean researchers led by Geoffrey M. Spinks and Seon Jeong Kim has now developed a novel, highly porous, sponge-like material whose mechanical properties closely resemble those of biological soft tissues. As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, it consists of a robust network of DNA strands and carbon nanotubes...