Monday 23 July 2012

Frankenjelly

Scientists have 'taken a rat apart and rebuilt it as a jellyfish'. Look at this extraordinary footage:



This 'medusoid' is actually an artificial organism made from silicone and muscle cells removed from a rat's heart. When placed in an electric field, it pulses and swims exactly like its living counterpart.

'Morphologically, we’ve built a jellyfish. Functionally, we’ve built a jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat,' says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. You can read the full story by clicking here.

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