Friday, February 15, 2013

Biologists Create "Zombie Cells" in Lab

Let's be honest; we know the Zombie Apocalypse will never happen. But that doesn't stop us from defacating in our cargos everytime the CDC releases a warning or some random pedestrians chew a man's face off and continues gnawing while being shot.

"A team at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico have innovated a technique whereby mammalian cells are coated with silica to form a near-perfect replicas.

The silica replicants can survive greater pressures and temperatures than flesh, and perform many functions better than the original cells did when alive.

By painting the cells with silicic acid in a petri dish, the acid embalms the organic matter in the cell down to the nanometer level.

Heating the silica to around 400C evaporates the protein in the cell, but leaves the silica as a three-dimensional replica of the "formerly living being.

Our zombie cells bridge chemistry and biology to create forms that not only near-perfectly resemble their past selves, but can do future work."

Im going to go sharpen a broom handle and barricade my doors, you can read the full story HERE.



Daniel, Jedi Editor
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5 comments:

  1. Viciously abridged for shock value. This is a novel technique for creating nanometre scale constructs with low resistance, which may have uses in computing and fuel cell technology (the future work the full article references). In the future if you unload both barrels into these zombie cells, you're more likely to kill an electric car than a carcus.

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    1. Completely over my head but nice science babble. :-P
      Off topic have you seen Utopia? I'm curious of your scientific perspective on the ideas raised in the show.

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    2. I've not seen Utopia, missed the first few episodes and catch-up TV over my broadband is a painful process!

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    3. Wow, the appliance of real science not sensationalised garbage.

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