Muscle which can heal itself after injury created in lab
- Biomedical engineers at Duke University have grown living skeletal muscle strikingly similar to real ones which contract powerfully, and rapidly integrate into the mice. The muscle has demonstrated an ability to heal itself both inside the lab and inside an animal.
- This was tested by stimulating it with electric impulses in the lab. On measuring its contractile strength, it turned out to be 10 times stronger than the previously engineered muscles.
- After subjecting it to damage with a toxin found in snake’s venom, they proved that the on-reserve satellite cells activate, multiply and successfully heal the fibres.
- Studies were conducted by a novel method of watching the bioengineered muscle through a window on the back of a living mouse, allowing real-time monitoring of the muscle’s integration and maturation inside a live animal.
Exams Perspective:
- Bioengineering
- Satellite Cells
- Artificially Grown Lab Muscle