Decellularizing tissue
So here's a fun one. Decellularization is the process by which you remove all (most) of the cellular material from a piece of tissue leaving only ECM (or cell wall if you're using plant tissue) behind. Normally this is done to animal tissues and is one of the ways they are exploring to make replacement hearts/organs for humans. Once you've got the decellularized tissue you can grow any new tissue on the scaffold. A researcher here in Ottawa spun the concept a bit and is decellularizing apples and growing human tissues on them. I've wanted to try this for a long time and fruit seemed like a great place to start so I gave it a try. I'm currently running a variety of fruit and veg and once that's done i'll move onto animal tissues. The thing that worked first was a couple slices of strawberry. I've also go kiwi, mushroom, a full strawberry, broccoli and apple slices going through the process and should be done in the next day or two. The process is super simple for fruit. Just slice, freeze for 20-40 minutes in a normal freezer and then soak in 0.5% SDS for a couple days. I change the sds every 5-6 hours to help draw as much out as possible. With animal tissue you gotta soak it in some other stuff first and it changes based on what sort of tissue. Also you should freeze it to -80 rather than -20.
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But really, nice work. :3
And after seeing your video of ghost fruit it reminds me very much of a tomato at 90ft below the surface in the ocean. Still cool though.
Would this be strictly for artificial so you have less chance for rejection?