You’re
not likely to see a medusoid swimming around in your favorite rock pool for a
while, but there is one out there doing its thing to best of its ability. Don’t
panic just yet, this one hasn’t a sting like a real jelly fish. It does
however, swim around with that relentless pulsing motion, and in doing that it
has become the buzz of the of the media, internet, print and air waves.
The
perpetrators of this biomimetic frankenfish are a large group of engineers from
Caltech and Harvard who hit the screens this past weekend with an article in
Nature Biotechnology (1).
The
group are drawn to the sea as the salt water is a nice conducting medium in
which lots of live action goes on. They built a silicone elastomer eight-legged
star shape, about a centimeter in diameter. Rather like a flattened jellyfish.
Being keen engineers, they got out their CAD programs to print a protein
pattern on one side of the rubber.
Now
the second clever bit – they encouraged muscle cells to grow onto the protein
pattern. Where did they get the cells? Well some rats helped out here and
donated their hearts and souls to the project. The rat heart muscles were
chemically disassembled and coaxed to grow on the protein template.
Then
came the big day. They popped their medusoid into their lab rock pool and, in
the classic movie manner, threw the switch to hit it with an electrical pulse.
Lo
and behold the muscle cells contract and the medusoid starts it first swim like
a regular jellyfish. The pulsing
swimming motion is beautifully captured in a movie (2). No dramatic background
music I’m afraid.
The
BBC has some stills, which go with some interviews (3). This is just the start.
So far it doesn’t eat, sting or commune with other jellyfish, but no one could
say a medusoid is a fish out of water at a rock pool party and all the guests
would get a charge from its presence.
- http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.2269.html
- http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nbt.2269-S4.mov
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18953034
