The Last Candle

Some of the most amazing paragraphs ever written, for multiple reasons (via Instapundit):

Investigators led by Douglas Cowan, PhD, a cell biologist in Children's Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, wanted to create a biological substitute for the AV node that would work in patients who have defective atrioventricular conduction [read: they need a pacemaker]. “The idea was that rather than using a pacemaker, we could create an electrical conduit to connect the atria and ventricles,” Cowan says. <p/> Cowan’s team, including first author Yeong-Hoon Choi in Children’s Department of Cardiac Surgery, obtained skeletal muscle from rats and isolated muscle precursor cells called myoblasts. They “seeded” the myoblasts onto a flexible scaffolding material made of collagen, creating a 3-dimensional bit of living tissue that could be surgically implanted in the heart. <p/> The cells distributed themselves evenly in the tissue and oriented themselves in the same direction. Tested in the laboratory, the engineered tissue started beating when stimulated electrically, and its muscle cells produced proteins called connexins that channel ions from cell to cell, connecting the cells electrically. <p/> When the engineered tissue was implanted into rats, between the right atrium and right ventricle, the implanted cells integrated with the surrounding heart tissue and electrically coupled to neighboring heart cells. Optical mapping of the heart showed that in nearly a third of the hearts, the engineered tissue had established an electrical conduction pathway, which disappeared when the implants were destroyed. The implants remained functional through the animals’ lifespan (about 3 years).

The cutting edge of medical science — hell, pretty much any recent medical science — never fails to boggle. But let’s give a little credit to the physical form, too.