Scientists successfully build fish from human heart muscle stem cells – and it can swim on its own! They’re hoping that this experiment could one day help build human hearts from scratch.
Scientists Successfully Build Fish from Stem Cells
Science can be so amazing, yet there are also many experiments that puzzle or even cause outrage both in the scientific community and the regular folks.
There’s no denying that the rather successful first transplant of a pig heart to a human being both outraged and amazed so many people. It led to many ethical questions about animal-human transplants, who should really be considered for organ donation, and whether experimenting something so crazy on humans should actually be done!
Despite the debates, it didn’t stop scientists from conducting experiments in hopes of finding cure and other options for those who are in need of medical intervention or even a miracle.
Recently, bioengineers were able to build a fake fish from human heart stem cells, and it can swim on its own despite not being a real fish.
Study author Sung-Jin Park, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech, explained that these projects look fun and cool to most people but they can also provide a unique insight into the mechanical and physical properties of the human heart muscles.
They hope that one day this experiment can have practical applications.
“Our ultimate goal is to build an artificial heart to replace a malformed heart in a child,” explained Park’s co-author, Kit Parker, a Harvard bioengineer at John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Amazingly, the experiment was able to achieve something never done before: a fish with muscles that can pulse and work on their own. It has a small structure that acts as a pacemaker – and could swim for over 100 days using that little pacemaker. Impressive, huh?
Watch the video here:
What Are Stem Cells?
Stem cells are ‘seeds’ from which other cells are generated or grown by the body. Under the right conditions, whether in the laboratory or the body, these stem cells divide and propagate to create more daughter cells.
