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Harvard scientists grow human cells onto nanowire scaffold to form 'cyborg' skin
Growing human tissue is old hat, but being able to measure activity inside flesh is harder -- any electrical probing tends to damage the cells. But a new breakthrough from Harvard researchers has produced the first "cyborg" tissue, created by embedding functional, biocompatible nanowires into lab-grown flesh. In a process similar to making microchips, the wires and a surrounding organic mesh are etched onto a substrate, which is then dissolved, leaving a flexible mesh. Groups of those meshes are formed into a 3D shape, then seeded with cell cultures, which grow to fill in the lattice to create the final system. Scientists were able to detect signals from heart and nerve cell electro-flesh made this way, allowing them to measure changes in response to certain drugs. In the near-term, that could allow pharmaceutical researchers to better study drug interaction, and one day such tissue might be implanted in a live person, allowing treatment or diagnosis. So, would that make you a cyborg or just bionic? We'll let others sort that one out.
Nanoscale ropes braid themselves, tiny sailors still needed to tie tiny knots
While perhaps not being quite as useful as towels, ropes are might handy things to have. With them you can attach things to other things and, well, that's really their primary use. But what if those things are small? Really small. You need nanoropes of the sort created at the Molecular Foundry, braids that measure just 600 nanometers in diameter. A sheet of paper? About 100,000 nanometers thick. Perhaps even more interesting than their scale is how they were constructed, formed of polypeptoids that self-assemble into the coiling double helix you see above. Possible uses? Right now this is a part of experiments to create more complex nanoscale structures, but we could totally see them being used to, you know, tie tiny things together.
