Boston (dbTechno) - University of Minnesota researchers made the announcement on Sunday that they have successfully created a beating rat heart in a laboratory.

The dream of being able to create new hearts and other organs is getting more and more a reality than ever before.

How they did it, was they removed all of the cells from a dead rat heart. They then used new heart cells injected from newborn rats, and within a few weeks, the new cells formed a new beating heart. The heart pumped blood as well.

Dr. Doris A. Taylor, the head of the team that created the beating heart, stated that the principle her laboratory followed was to “give nature the tools and get out of the way.”

She stated “We just took nature’s own building blocks to build a new organ.”

She continued, “The heart is a beautiful organ, and it’s not one that I thought I’d ever be able to build in a dish.”

The hope is that this will lead to the creation of hearts, kidneys, livers, lungs, and other organs for humans in the coming years.

The report has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.

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