back to article JELLYFISH bio-bot built with rat cells to mend broken hearts

Boffins have fashioned an artificial bio-engineered jellyfish from rat cells that could one day fix up badly damaged human heart tissue. Researchers from Harvard and Caltech working towards building an artificial human heart cobbled together some silicon and some living rat heart cells to make a jellyfish that can pump through …

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  1. Roger Kynaston
    Coat

    I for one

    welcome our jellified overlords.

    Sorry, had to be done.

  2. Jelliphiish

    your welcome

    this bit's required apparently.

    1. dotdavid
      Headmaster

      Your welcome what?

      I like to think it is short for "your welcome will ensure your survival when the day of the jellipocalypse arrives"

      1. Hardcastle the ancient

        Re: Your welcome what?

        In the hillside?

  3. D@v3
    Terminator

    bio-engineered rat jellyfish?

    what could possibly go wrong?

    1. Silverburn
      Devil

      Re: bio-engineered rat jellyfish?

      I have visions of the legendary "The Thing" being remade...as a documentary.

    2. Ru
      Boffin

      Re: bio-engineered rat jellyfish?

      I'm curious as to how it escaped the usual 'blobomination' tag.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hey Hey Hey

    The chicken^Wrat heart was kept alive

    in a special solution

    thub thub. thub thub.

    The XXXXXXXL orange shirt with the initials F.A. on it.

  5. Mark Harburn

    Skrill from Earth: Final Conflict?

  6. Blofeld's Cat
    Angel

    "They then dropped Medusoid into a container of saltwater and shocked it into swimming just like the real thing."

    Please, please tell me the researchers then clasped their hands together and shouted: "It's alive!", before laughing maniacally.

  7. Tony Barnes
    Thumb Up

    Awesome

    I do love it when we get to read about the more fun research that is going on around the globe. There are plenty of future practical applications for this sort of tech, but for now, it is just great to know that someone somewhere is being given the budget to make stuff like this work!

    1. Silverburn
      Childcatcher

      Re: Awesome

      Don't worry the..

      <--

      ..brigade will attempt to squash this idea before it goes an further. And if they don't win, the bible bashers will be along right behind them. The kill joys.

    2. Intractable Potsherd
      Devil

      Re: Awesome

      But will you still be saying that when the Special Projects Bureau push the envelope??

      << because that's what it might look like!

  8. Jon Double Nice

    Have these people not watched 'Sharktopus'?

    I mean I'm not even a scientist and I've seen it.

    1. Thorne

      Re: Have these people not watched 'Sharktopus'?

      A movie called "The Jelly Rat" doesn't inspire much fear

      "In Deep Water, nobody can eat their cheese"

  9. auburnman

    Not to detract from the efforts of these boffins, but weren't we on the verge of growing artificial hearts and or creating pigs with hearts that could be transplanted in to humans years ago? Did all these tacks dead end or were they sunk by the aforementioned killjoy brigades?

    1. Tim Parker

      RotJ

      "weren't we on the verge of growing artificial hearts and or creating pigs with hearts that could be transplanted in to humans years ago?"

      So all the promising pigs disappeared - and then these Rattus Cnidaria suddenly appear ?

      Coincidence ?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Am I over-interpreting this...

    or does it PROVE that the creationists were right all along?

    1. Silverburn

      Re: Am I over-interpreting this...

      It'll be a cold, cold day in hell before any of those twats are proven right.

      The pun and irony of that statement was intended.

  11. Helena Handcart
    Thumb Down

    Silly cone

    It looks like our favourite hack is confused between silicon and silicone. Let's hope the boffins know the difference.

    1. Silverburn
      Happy

      Re: Silly cone

      Given the lack of popularity of plastic surgery in Switzerland and the lack of mating opportunities being buried in an underground tunnel 12hrs a day with other boffins entails...I doubt it.

  12. Crisp

    Scientists with the best of intentions build jellyfish bio bot!

    No.... This doesn't sound like the start to an apocalypse movie at all...

  13. philbo

    Or, as TS Eliot might have said

    Jellyfish rats come make a clone

    Jellyfish rats make bodily parts

    With jellyfish, rat and silicone

    Jellyfish rats make a jellyfish heart

  14. Identity
    Stop

    Hearts

    —will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.

    —The Great and Powerful Oz

  15. Trollslayer
    Thumb Up

    Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman

    You were all thinking it, I jsut said it.

    Some amazing stuff over the horizon though.

  16. CaveatVenditor
    Happy

    . . . and after the news, next on Jellyfish/Rat FM ....

    "I left my jellyfish/rat in San Franciso" sung by Frank (ratpack) Sinatra

    and the list goes on . . .

    but I hope not.

  17. Great Bu

    For with strange aeons it may come to pass.......

    that the Necronimicon's prophecies were mis-interpreted, the rise of Great Cthulhu from sunken R'Lieh was actually a reference to the rise of the escaped hyper intelligent ratctopus from the depths.

    Even death has died.

    Hopefully he will eat me first.

  18. LINCARD1000
    Alert

    Idle Speculation

    ...on my part, but what would stop your hyper-intelligent jellyfish-rat heart from getting bored one day, ripping free from where it was implanted inside your chest, and swimming around your delicious, juicy, oozing internal organs and stinging you to death from the inside...?

    THE HORROR...

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