An "Artificial Stingray"

[Recusant]

Researchers have built a tiny biological robot that uses heart cells from a rat to move through water.

"Artificial stingray is 'living robot'" | BBC

Image Credit: Harvard

Scientists have designed a robotic stingray that could help our understanding of the human heart.

The miniature robot, one-tenth the scale of the actual fish, moves using heart cells taken from a rat.
Researchers hope the robotic ray will give new insight into the heart's ability to pump blood and its potential implications in heart disease.

The research is published in the journal, Science.

"It turns out the musculature in the stingray has to do the same thing as the heart does: it has to move fluids," said lead researcher, Prof Kevin Kit Parker of Harvard University, US.

The scientists reverse-engineered the marine animal to understand how it glides in liquid environments.

They then built a robotic prototype, which contains a gold skeleton and a single layer of 200,000 cardiac cells wrapped in a gel-like material similar to the gel used for breast implants.

The final tiny synthetic ray weighs 10g and is 16mm long.

The cardiac cells had their DNA modified to be responsive to light.

[Continues . . .]

[xSilverPhinx]

That is really cool. 

[Icarus]

     They will be accused of playing God, I suspect.

[Tank]

     They will be accused of playing God, I suspect.

No. They weren't playing god. They actually did something.

[Dave]

     They will be accused of playing God, I suspect.

Just wait til they make a self replicating molecules from basic chemicals.

Especialy ones that can respond to changes in their environment . . .

Not quite there yet though.

[Asmodean]

This, I like.

Also, I see potential implication for cybernetic biomods and augmentations, a topic which fascinates me. We are closer than many may think in that regard, by the way. Cochlear implants allow pretty much totally deaf people to hear, and we're doing those now.

[Dave]

And artificial vision implants are coming along nicely it seems.

Not quite on the same line but having an implant that monitors, and applies therapy to, my ailing ticker this application, for Parkinson's sufferers, was another good application for very similar bioelectronics.

I am still moved after watching this video several times, but not as much as the cbap obviously is!

There may also be something similar for chronic depression in the pipeline IIRC.

Later: Something like this.