Scientists have been struggling to develop large-scale human tissue. In a breakthrough, researchers successfully turned a spinach leaf into working human heart tissue.
This means they are closer to solving the problem of recreating the tiny, branching networks of blood vessels in human tissue, the Daily Telegraph reported. So far, scientists have unsuccessfully tried to use 3D printing to recreate these intricate networks.
While plants and animals have very different ways of transporting chemicals around the body, the networks by which they do so are quite similar.
In order to create the artificial heart, the scientists stripped the plant cells from the spinach leaves, sending fluids and microbeads similar to human blood cells through the spinach vessels and then “seeded” the human cells which are used to line blood vessels into it. Eventually, the same technique cold be sued to grow layers of healthy heart muscles, they suggest.
