The Best-Looking Laboratory-Grown Ear Yet
Bioengineered Ears Left: The 1997 bioengineered ear implanted on a mouse. Center: The most recent bioengineered ear shown on its own. Right, top and bottom: The lastest bioengineered ear is flexible, like a normal human ear. Left: Wikimedia Commons. Center and right: Cervantes et al., Journal of the Royal Society Interface This is a bioengineered piece of tissue made to the size and shape of an adult human ear. What's this? It's a life-size ear, bioengineered from cow and sheep tissue. It may not look like something you'd want to have sticking out of your head. Nevertheless, its geometry is closer to life than a previous effort at bioengineering an outer ear, its creators say. In 1997, a team of surgeons from the Children's Hospital in Boston earned fame for engineering a small ear and implanting it in a mouse. One researcher, Harvard Medical School surgeon Joseph Vacanti, was involved in both...