Technology has done a lot to help in the study and development of human heart research. There are a number of current options to choose from in this line. But scientists may have just found the simplest, albeit farfetched, alternative.
By simply placing rat heart cells over a gold skeleton, scientists have created something completely innovative. That is, as LA Times explains, an artificial stingray that can be controlled by light. Theoretically, these ray-bots may be able to further the development in soft robotics. After which, the technology can be further developed and maybe even adopted into building an artificial heart.
Kit Parker, a Harvard bioengineer, is the senior author of the study. The idea struck him when he observed that a stingray's movements - rippling, quick and cord-like - was very much like the movement of the trabeculated muscle on the endocardial surface of the heart.
As ScienceMag.Org explains, the team of Parker built a miniature version of a stingray using a microfabricated gold skeleton. The rubber body that surrounded it was powered with heart muscles of a rat. The cardiomyocytes were then genetically engineered in order to respond to light.
The logic behind the study is as follows: The heart is, essentially, a muscle that simply pumps fluid around the body. Accordingly, animals such as the stingray move their bodies to do the very same thing. The only difference is, their movements cause a reaction to the fluid outside their bodies.
Parker went on to explain that most marine life forms act technically, as muscular pumps. He asks, "Do we mimic that in a robotic system and learn more about the mammalian heart, or the human heart?"
Parker's idea is not a unique one. Other scientists have come before him that have studied the movements of water animals and how these could teach humans about the human heart. Parker is, however, the first to be able to "control" this movement. And it is this development that could propel his studies and possibly the adoption of the same on humans.
