"I had this whole idea of a laser-guided, tissue-engineered stingray made out of rat," Parker said. "By putting in the light control they have a way of controlling the cell without a nervous system," said Long, who was not involved in the stingray research. Each burst of blue sets off a cascade of signals through the cells, which have been genetically-engineered to respond to light. The idea of taking apart a rat's heart and transforming it into a tissue-engineered stingray first came to Kevin Kit Parker during a trip to the New England Aquarium with his daughter. A precursor to the stingray was a tissue-engineered jellyfish Parker helped create in 2012, also with the aim of understanding the muscular pumping of a heart.

Source: ABC News August 08, 2016 04:52 UTC