“An artificial jellyfish which is able to swim with the help of beating heart muscle cells has been created by scientists. The tentacled artificial creature, made from silicon, has been dubbed ‘Medusoid’ because of its resemblance to the snake-haired character from Greek mythology whose gaze turned people to stone. It is able to mimic the swimming movement of a jellyfish thanks to muscle cells from rat hearts which were implanted onto its silicon frame and grown into a pattern similar to the muscles of a real jellyfish. By applying an electric current to a container of conducting liquid, the scientists demonstrated they could ‘shock’ the muscles into contracting so that it began to move through the water. The ‘reverse-engineering’ project by researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Harvard University was published on the website of the Nature Biotechnology journal.” w/ photos
