Artificial jellyfish created to mimic heart muscle

Science : Researchers have created a “Franken-jelly,” an artificial jellyfish that can swim like the real thing. John Dabiri of Caltech, Kevin Kit Parker of Harvard University, and coworkers write in Nature Biotechnology that their purpose was to reverse engineer a muscular pump. Jellyfish swim rhythmically by flexing their muscles quickly, then slowly relaxing and flattening them. To create a model that mimicked that behavior, the researchers grew rat heart cells on a jellyfish-shaped piece of silicon. When they placed their “medusoid” in a salty solution and ran en electric current through the water, the rat cells started flexing and propelled the medusoid through the water like a real jellyfish. Even better, no batteries were requiredâmdash;the researchers were able to use the energy stored and produced by the muscle cells. “By studying how jellyfish manipulate liquids with their body, Parker says, scientists may be able to come up with more accurate ways to fix or even replace damaged heart valves,” writes Krystnell Storr for Science.