Researchers make a spinach leaf pump like a human heart

Just when you believed it was safe to try to eat a salad scientists at Worcester Polytechnic Institute have demonstrated that a decellularized spinach leaf can be turned into a vascular community that could support doctors regrow organs. The undertaking, showcased in the journal Biomaterials, is about as proof-of-strategy as you can get, but the major benefit is proving that a previously existing vascular program can stand in for other programs.

“Cellulose is biocompatible [and] has been utilized in a huge assortment of regenerative drugs purposes, these types of as cartilage tissue engineering, bone tissue engineering, and wound healing,” the scientists wrote.

This implies you could use anything like this spinach leaf as an overlay or scaffold for fragile bodily tissues. A leaf like this could supply oxygen to damaged coronary heart tissue, making sure the new organ or regrown tissue does not die after implantation. Also these pumping leaves would make for a heck of a chef’s salad.