

Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video) - ananyob
http://www.nature.com/news/artificial-jellyfish-built-from-rat-cells-1.11046

======
user49598
On 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.

[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish>

~~~
woadwarrior01
From the wikipedia article you linked to: _Jellyfish have no brain nor central
nervous system, but employ a loose network of nerves, located in the
epidermis, which is called a "nerve net"._

Though they are brainless, they do have enough reflexes to get by.

~~~
tincholio
> Though they are brainless, they do have enough reflexes to get by.

It's surprising how well this applies to some people, too...

------
arturadib
> _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.

~~~
ihsw
That is essentially what a jelly fish is.

To paraphrase another comment quoting wikipedia: "Most jellyfish do not have
specialized digestive, osmoregulatory, central nervous, respiratory, or
circulatory systems." and, "Jellyfish have no brain nor central nervous
system."

------
msellout
At least they mentioned the grad student who did all the work!

------
vernon
“Morphologically, we’ve built a jellyfish. Functionally, we’ve built a
jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat,” You will never see that set of
words in that order again.

------
bmelton
I 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.

~~~
mekwall
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.

------
wkearney99
I have a 4 year old, so naturally the idea of rat birds and raining food comes
to mind. Kids movies, oy.

------
jack-r-abbit
hmmm... I didn't realize that the world's jellyfish population was in such
jeopardy that we needed to create an artificial one. Thankfully we have
science looking out for us. o_0

