'jellyfish' made from bioengineered rat cells

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfC3eVjmpfo

You begin with an eight-armed silicon membrane. You harvest rat heart-muscle cells and organize them in a disctinct jellyfish-like pattern on your membrane. Lastly, you set your creature free in a vat of fluid, and schock it with electricity. You watch as your "jellyfish" swims away.

Scientists from Harvard and Caltech did just that, and they are calling their rat-celled, bioengineered jellyfish a "medusoid." They hope that by studying its pumping motions, they will be able to extrapolate a better understanding of another pump -- the human heart. Their paper appeared in an advance online version today in Nature Biotechnology.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/we-took-a-rat-apart-and-rebuilt-it-as-a-jellyfish/260161/

Down the road, the team plans to build a medusoid that uses human heart cells, Yong reports. "You've got a heart drug?" Parker told Yong. "You let me put it on my jellyfish, and I'll tell you if it can improve the pumping."

is it just me or does "put it on my jellyfish" sound like a Will.I.Am chorus

Functionally, we've built a jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat.

i bet jason faulkner's pissed

I know some people who are genetically rats

Sometimes the medusoid was already moving in an uncoordinated way when peeled off the mould. But applying a short 1 hertz alternating current to the solution set it going in a realistic way – without the need for any extra power – for up to an hour. Each contraction of the heart muscle makes the artificial jellyfish's body suddenly bend, propelling it forward. The rubber body then slowly regains its initial shape, before contracting again.

The medusoids are "ingenious", says Che Connon, who is developing tissue-engineered artificial corneas at the University of Reading in the UK. Biotech labs could use the cyborgs as filters, he says, with possible larger-scale uses. "I could easily imagine medusoids used in large numbers to clean up oil spills in a similar manner to the way a jellyfish filters out its food," he adds.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22088-heart-muscle-helps-cyborg-jellyfish-come-alive.html

great idea - make them self-reporuducing and well all be in grey goo in no time you bastards! chartleon heston looking at the statue of liberty!!!!!!!!!!!!!

self-replicating nanotechnology ≠ apes

I wish these could self replicate
http://www.maine.gov/ifw/education/wildlifepark/wildlife/images/gray%20fox.jpg

I, for one, welcome our new ratty-fish overlords!

i like that that is an official maine.gov government portrait of a gray fox

'We Took a Rat Apart and Rebuilt It as a Jellyfish'

liars song, right?

yt suggested videos are odd

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1945000/images/_1949073_mouse_ear300.jpg