ERROR 1
ERROR 1
ERROR 2
ERROR 2
ERROR 2
ERROR 2
ERROR 2
Password and Confirm password must match.
If you have an ACS member number, please enter it here so we can link this account to your membership. (optional)
ERROR 2
ACS values your privacy. By submitting your information, you are gaining access to C&EN and subscribing to our weekly newsletter. We use the information you provide to make your reading experience better, and we will never sell your data to third party members.
The list of creatures that have inspired scientists to build synthetic, or biomimetic, devices just got longer, according to a report in Nature Biotechnology (DOI: 10.1038/nbt.2269). John O. Dabiri of Caltech, Kevin Kit Parker of Harvard University, and coworkers have engineered a thin, eight-armed polymeric sheet to swim like a jellyfish. To accomplish the feat, the team mapped the pumping motions of a juvenile jellyfish while it was swimming. Then the researchers used the collected information to build a mimic from three simple components, says Janna C. Nawroth, a graduate student at Caltech and lead author of the report. The first of these parts is a spin-coated 22-µm-thick polydimethylsiloxane film. Onto that layer, the team printed the protein fibronectin in a pattern simulating jellyfish muscle-fiber alignment. Finally, the researchers seeded rat heart cells onto the structure and incubated them until they formed electrically conductive tissue. The resulting mimic, called a medusoid, swims like a jellyfish when exposed to a pulsed electrical field. Aside from being a model system to inspire the development of future tissue-engineered organs that pump, Nawroth says, these medusoids might eventually be used to test drugs for cardiac disease.
Join the conversation
Contact the reporter
Submit a Letter to the Editor for publication
Engage with us on X