Hi Steemians! In this small video a remarkable artificial animal is shown that consists of a gold skeleton inside for stiffness surrounded by an elastic body. The body is coated with 200.000 living heart cells (harvested from 2-day-old rat embryos) that were genetically engineered to respond to light. So when exposed to light, the wings flap and the cyborg moves in a controlled way.
It could be useful for tissue-engineering - to create bioartifical hearts by designing smart heart cells and generally, to rebuild parts of the human body.
Also it is a small step on the way to artificial creatures that can react to external stimuli by complex behaviour. Of note, this was funded by the NIH, but also the Army, among others.
My first question was, do we really need artificial creatures? Each day dozens of animal species, if not more, become extinct. Those won´t ever come back, which is a huge tragedy. Too few people care about this.
On the other hand, very new cross-over technologies are often impossible to evaluate adequately and may yield some unexpected insights only later. What do you think?
More about it here.
Very cool. I wonder why the army funded it? Maybe - super soldier? Upvote
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Thanks for posting high quality and interesting content. :) very interesting! i wonder how we can apply this to our own biology.
Im not sure what I think about this morally, but this is definitely the coolest thing I saw today!