Scientists have developed a fish made of human heart muscle cells that can move and beat automatically using the same force as the heart.
Scientists from Harvard and Emroy University have developed this miniature blood system, which can move with certain pulses for more than 100 days.
The inventors hope that the device equipped with muscle cells can replace human hearts for those who need transplants in the future, according to research published in the scientific journal "Science".
This "fish" has two characteristics that may contribute to achieving this. The first is that it moves automatically, without the need for automatic propulsion, and it works with a mechanical movement, according to the "Science Alert" website, which published a video of the experiment that showed the "fish" moving automatically.
The site indicates that this study will help researchers take an in-depth look at the causes of heart disease. "Our ultimate goal is to be able to develop a heart that can replace a deformed heart in children," says biomedical engineer Kevin Kate Parker, a researcher at Harvard University.
But Parker, in his research notes, seemed realistic, noting that it is easy to make something resembling a heart, but many challenges remain before reaching a fully functional human organ, according to the American "Al-Hurra" website.
"I can make a model of a heart out of play dough, but that doesn't mean I built a heart," he says.
"You can help cancer cells grow in a Petri dish until they become a pulsating mass and we might call it an organ of the heart, but none of these efforts, in theory, will succeed in combining the physics of a system that pulses a billion times over your lifetime while... "At the same time, it instantly revives its cells. That's the challenge, and that's what we have to do."
The "Heartfish" was built on previous efforts, during which scientists created a jellyfish using the muscles of a rat's heart. The fish contains two layers of muscle cells on each side of its tail. When one of them contracts, the other flattens, to provoke an automatic mechanical movement that stimulates the taut side to contract and the other to relax, in a continuous succession movement.
Inspired by the muscles of the insect wings, this movement activates the ion channels that contribute to muscle contraction and relaxation.
The researcher from Harvard University, biomedical engineer, Kil-Young Lee, says that they were able to connect the electromechanical signals between the two layers of muscle in the fish's tail, which led to the creation of a cycle in which the contraction of one muscle contributes to the tension of the other.
Parker points out that the researchers did not resort to using a heart model in their testing, but instead tried to identify the principles of biophysics that manage the work of the heart, and used them as a reference in reproducing the blood system.