Artificial life form : Synthetic Jellyfish

Recent news on reverse engineered jellyfish is exciting. Scientists from USA (1) published an article on  their study where a synthetically engineered life form mimics the muscle contraction of a jellyfish with 1Hz frequency. They used a silicon template and dissociated rat tissue to form a hierarchical design of a "muscle pump".

And what if we were able to produce micro or nano sized muscle pumps to be used in electronics or other applications? This is an interesting point to explore in my opinion. The application areas would be diverse! Contraction and movement produces a force that can be used to open closed blood vessels?! 

Further reading and more videos on the jellyfish  please follow the links:


[1] J. C. Nawroth, H. Lee, A. W. Feinberg, C. M. Ripplinger, M. L. McCain, A. Grosberg, J. O. Dabiri, and K. K. Parker, “A tissue-engineered jellyfish with biomimetic propulsion,” Nature Biotechnology, Jul. 2012.
[2] E. Yong, “Artificial jellyfish built from rat cells,” Nature, Jul. 2012.
[3] G. Naik, “Lab-Made Jellyfish Hints at Fix for Damaged Hearts,” Wall Street Journal, 22-Jul-2012.