Ok guys now this is exciting news, a group of bioengineers from Caltech and Harvard university, created a creature made of artificial and biological parts which means, we got the world's first cyborg! The artificial part being a layer of silicone and on top of the silicone layer comes the biological part, a thin layer of muscle cells of a rat. The creature is called medusoid as it resembles a real-life jellyfish and can swim like one as well.
Janna Nawroth, researcher at Caltech biotecnology, along with Harvard biophysicist Kit Parker, modeled the medusoid on the basis of the common moon jellyfish, which contracts its body in a rapid manner then slowly release it in order to swim. They used the rat heart cells to simulate the jellyfish motion, when there is an electrical current running through the water, medusoid smoothly contracts its muscles and then thanks to the non-organic part (silicon) of its body returns into a flat shape. Watch the little creature go:
The scientist next goal is to create a cyborg that would be able to make decisions of its own given the ceratain input and could do a few more things, meaning not just swim in a forward direction. This is really is awesome news, bravo science, on the other hand, have you seen that iRobot flick? ;)
