Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
#2I suppose it's an interesting article on its own, but I don't know that any of its suggested premises are true. The most obvious difference between this thing and a jellyfish is that a jellyfish doesn't need an electrical bath to exist in. There are other differences of course, but if they'd built a more analogous 'jellyfish robot' that at least functioned on its own, perhaps I'd be more receptive to the article's claims.
As it stands, the notion of 'testing heart medicine' on it seem exceedingly optimistic as it's fairly hard to test a heart in isolation. Also, this isn't a heart analogue, it's a jellyfish analogue. Also, a heart doesn't react to external impulses in the same way.
It's neat. There's no taking that away from it, but I just don't see how any of what the inventor claims is actually practical.
Re: Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
#3> We built an animal
No they didn't. They built a sheet of biological material that pulsates when placed in an electrical field. Animals reproduce, and hence adapt and evolve.
It's a neat gadget, but let's not get too carried away.
Re: Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
#4I suppose it's an interesting article on its own, but I don't know that any of its suggested premises are true. The most obvious difference between this thing and a jellyfish is that a jellyfish doesn't need an electrical bath to exist in. There are other differences of course, but if they'd built a more analogous 'jellyfish robot' that at least functioned on its own, perhaps I'd be more receptive to the article's cl…
Yeah I agree with you that they haven't really created a jellyfish. It's not much more then a muscle that contracts in the same way as a jellyfish when subjected to an electrical charge.
But if you read it all you'll notice the following paragraph, "Parker’s lab works on creating artificial models of human heart tissues for regenerating organs and testing drugs, and the team built the medusoid as a way of understanding the “fundamental laws of muscular pumps”. It is an engineer’s approach to basic science: prove that you have identified the right principles by building something with them." - This in itself is a very nice feat.
Re: Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
#5> We built an animal No they didn't. They built a sheet of biological material that pulsates when placed in an electrical field. Animals reproduce, and hence adapt and evolve. It's a neat gadget, but let's not get too carried away.
Yeah, but I think it's pretty interesting-- not because of the complexity of what's created, but because of the materials.
Re: Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
#6On a somewhat related note, as far as animals go, jelly fish are nuts. I mean they're barely animals at all. From wikipedia: "Most jellyfish do not have specialized digestive, osmoregulatory, central nervous, respiratory, or circulatory systems." and, "Jellyfish have no brain nor central nervous system". No brain? I mean come on. Jelly fish are floating piles of goo with absolutely no purpose or delight in life other than being floating piles of goo. It's made weirder by how big some of them get, "Jellyfish range from about one millimeter in bell height and diameter to nearly two meters in bell height and diameter; the tentacles and mouth parts usually extend beyond this bell dimension." Giant brainless animals roam the ocean looking to sting and absorb prey without ever really knowing they're even doing it. They're pretty much ocean zombies.
They're nuts, and are a great example of how evolution cares about nothing but survival.
Re: Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
#7On a somewhat related note, as far as animals go, jelly fish are nuts. I mean they're barely animals at all. From wikipedia: "Most jellyfish do not have specialized digestive, osmoregulatory, central nervous, respiratory, or circulatory systems." and, "Jellyfish have no brain nor central nervous system". No brain? I mean come on. Jelly fish are floating piles of goo with absolutely no purpose or delight in life other…
This comment made my day :) one of the liveliest I've seen on hn
Re: Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
#8I suppose it's an interesting article on its own, but I don't know that any of its suggested premises are true. The most obvious difference between this thing and a jellyfish is that a jellyfish doesn't need an electrical bath to exist in. There are other differences of course, but if they'd built a more analogous 'jellyfish robot' that at least functioned on its own, perhaps I'd be more receptive to the article's cl…
The thing I took away from it was that they suspected that all muscular pumps work in a similar way.
> "My bet is that to get a muscular pump, the electrical activity has got to spread as a wavefront.”
They were then able to re-purpose heart muscle into a different form that still functioned as a muscular pump. Really quite interesting :)
Re: Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
#9> We built an animal No they didn't. They built a sheet of biological material that pulsates when placed in an electrical field. Animals reproduce, and hence adapt and evolve. It's a neat gadget, but let's not get too carried away.
Agreed; this isn't much different than in bio where we would apply an electrical current to freshly amputated frogs legs (or heart) and watch them twitch. It's just a much more elaborate presentation. When it's swimming on it's own and reproducing, then I'll agree that they have created a new animal.
Re: Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
#10At least they mentioned the grad student who did all the work!