The heart tissue was grown on a scaffold of fibers made from the same protein that spiders use to spin their webs

Apr 11, 2015 07:53 GMT  ·  By

In a recent paper in the science journal PLOS ONE, researchers at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in Russia detail how, in a series of experiments, they managed to kind of, sort of grow heart tissue on spider webs. 

What's more, the specialists say that the heart tissue they engineered in laboratory conditions was fully functional, meaning that it was able to contract and conduct electrical impulses, just like normal cardiac tissue in the body does.

How the experiments played out

As you've probably figured out, the scientists behind this research project didn't go hunting through the wilderness for perfectly executed spider webs to steal and bring back to the lab with them.

What they did was use a protein dubbed spidroin to create teeny tiny fibers which they then arranged in the form of a scaffold of sorts. The researchers obtained the spidroin they needed to engineer their fibers from genetically modified yeast.

The reason they say that the scaffolds they put together were kind of, sort of like spider webs is because the protein that they used to make them is the same one that spiders rely on when spinning their webs.

Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, the specialists explain that, unlike other materials currently used to create scaffolds for growing heart tissue, their spidroin fibers proved perfectly elastic and strong at the same time.

Having put together the spidroin scaffolds, the researchers placed rat heart cells on them. In just a few days, the cells developed and came to form heart tissue. The tissue was able to contract rhythmically and even respond to and carry electrical impulses.

“Cardiac tissue cells successfully adhere to the substrate of recombinant spidroin; they grow forming layers and are fully functional, which means they can contract coordinately,” study leader Konstantin Agladze said in a statement.

The importance of these experiments

These days, there aren't all that many donor organs to go around. To overcome this hurdle, researchers are hard at work trying to figure out a way to create organs fit for transplant from a patient's own cells. Such organs would also eliminate the risk for rejection.

Given the encouraging outcome of their experiments, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology team imagine that, one day in the near future, spidroin fibers like the ones they created will help cultivate heart tissue and even whole hearts suitable to be transplanted into a patient's body.

Heart tissue cells grown on a matrix, stained with fluorescent markers
Heart tissue cells grown on a matrix, stained with fluorescent markers

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Spiders use a protein dubbed spidroin to create their webs
Heart tissue cells grown on a matrix, stained with fluorescent markers
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