Cardiomyocytes as High-Power Building Blocks for Bio-Hybrid Machines

In an effort to better understand the human heart, our team initiated an effort to identify the fundamental rules of muscular pumps. We reasoned that by reverse engineering marine lifeforms, we would be better able to understand the structure-function relationships in the heart. We reverse engineered life forms such as the jellyfish and sting ray by elucidating how they are built and how they swim. These studies led us to the conclusion that we could use cardiac myocytes as a building block to replicate these marine structure-function relationships in synthetic systems. Furthermore, we decided to use robotics, specifically biohybrid robotics, as an experimental tool to study the fundamental design of muscular pumps. I will present results from these studies.