Researchers from Harvard, in collaboration with colleagues from Emory University, have developed the first fully autonomous Biohybrid fish from human cardiac cells. This brings the researchers one step closer to developing a complex artificial muscular pump. The artificial fish can swim through the recreation of muscle contractions of a pumping heart. Scientist believes it will be useful to study heart diseases like arrhythmia.
What does the developer say about Autonomous Biohybrid fish?
Kit Parker, Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and senior author of the paper says ‘’ Our ultimate goal is to build an artificial heart to replace a malformed heart in a child. since, most of the work in building heart tissue or hearts, including some work we have done, is focused on replicating the anatomical features or replicating the simple beating of the heart in the engineered tissue. But here, we are drawing design inspiration from the biophysics of the heart, which is harder to do. Now, rather than using heart imaging as a blueprint, we are identifying the key biophysical principles that make the heart work, using them as design criteria, and replicating them in a system, a living, swimming fish, where it is much easier to see if we are successful.”
Where the inspiration comes from?
The inspiration for autonomous Biohybrid came from the shape and swimming motion of a zebrafish. Zebrafish with two layers of muscles, contract one side and stretch the other. Continue contract leaders to a closed-loop system that drives fish for more than 100 years. The team aims to build more devices from human heart cells. Previously, in 2012, using cardiac muscles from rats, a jellyfish-like Biohybrid pump develops. Also, in 2016 researchers developed a swimming artificial stingray from rat heart muscle cells.
