Medusoid: Tissue-Engineered Biomimetic Jellyfish

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Choosing a jellyfish for its simplistic structure, scientists have successfully replicated the creature's muscle pumping and consequent biomimetic motion with chemically dissociated rat tissue and silicone polymer. This required a revolutionarily organized combination of biosynthetic materials, computer-aided design approaches and soft robotics, which demonstrated the ability to more broadly apply this kind of synthetic muscular action for other applications in the future.

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The final jellyfish was built by laying out a thin membrane of silicone that mimicked the shape of a small jellyfish, printing a protein pattern onto it, and then using that pattern to serve as "a road map for growth and organization of dissociated rat tissue (individual heart muscle cells that retain the ability to contract) into a coherent swimming muscle." Synchronized swimming contractions were then induced by placing the device into a conductive fluid and applying an oscillating electric stimulus that alternated from zero to five volts.

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Ensuing Products
Organic Pumps, Artificial Organs
Synbio Components
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www.harvard.edu
www.caltech.edu
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Journal article