We’re getting closer to being a race of cyborgs: scientists have engineered self-healing artificial muscles. A research team at Duke University created the bio-engineered muscle tissue which is 10 times stronger than any previous iterations. And, unlike previous generations of bio-engineered muscles, this artificial muscle is able to heal itself both in the laboratory and in animals.

The researchers damaged the muscle by exposing it to a toxin found in snake venom. They then implanted the muscle inside a mouse and installed a “window” in the mouse’s skin to monitor how the muscle was integrating and changing inside the animal’s body. Biological muscles have cells on reserve, waiting to jump into action when the muscle is damaged. The researchers had to create a similar set of “satellite cells” and then watch to see if they would heal the injured bio-engineered muscle.

The muscle fibers were engineered to produce fluorescent flashes to make it easier for the researchers to gauge the rate of the muscles’ growth and strengthening. As they watched through the glass window on the backs of the mice, they witnessed the muscle tissues repairing themselves much in the same way biological muscles do. Next up for the researchers: working to repair biological muscle injuries and diseases with artificial muscles.

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Using mouse brains for research is standard practice in most countries, but there are some flaws with that practice. Most notable, not surprisingly, is the fact that mouse brains are just too different from human brains to be of use when researchers need very detailed information. Austrian researcher Juergen Knoblich decided that he should have better tools to work with, so he set out to do what other scientists have only been able to dream about: he grew miniature human brains in his lab.

Knoblich and his colleagues used adult stem cells that they programmed to behave like embryonic stem cells, turning them into induced pluripotent stem cells. They concocted a potion of brain-developing nutrients and fed it to the cells. A few weeks later, tiny brain-like “organoids” had formed. The little “brains” are no more than three to four millimeters across and display structures similar to parts of an actual human brain.

The practice of experimenting on human brain tissue may sound a little ethically sketchy, but these  Petri dish brains will never develop consciousness. Recreating the incredible complexity of a functioning human brain is something that science still hasn’t been able to do. But if the researchers could figure out how to make slightly more complex “brains,” they may be able to give some insight into why some fetal brains don’t develop properly and why others develop conditions like schizophrenia. Rest assured, however, that even these brilliant researchers are light-years away from being able to produce a functional, feeling, sentient brain.

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Human fat cells may be good for something besides muffin tops, after all. A recent study from Stanford’s School of Medicine found that human fat removed during liposuction is rich in cells that easily become induced pluripotent stem cells – much more easily than the skin cells currently used by researchers. When reprogrammed to act like embryonic stem cells, the fat cells can aid in tissue-regeneration research or help in the study of specific diseases. And since 30 to 40 percent of Americans are obese, researchers are basically saying that they’ve got an unlimited supply of what they call “liquid gold.”

Like Tyler Durden, the researchers see the value in discarded human fat. But their purposes are much more benign: by removing fat cells from a patient’s body and turning them into other types of cells, doctors can potentially test out the effectiveness of different treatments on a small scale before subjecting the patient to the treatment. For example, doctors could take fat cells from a patient with heart problems and coax those cells to become cardiac cells. They could then try out a number of drugs and other treatments on the cells themselves, sparing the patient the side effects of ineffective treatment options, until they find one that works. Since fat cells can potentially be transformed into any type of human cell – and much more reliably than was previously possible – this advance could mean huge leaps for all types of medical research.

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