© Monika Skolimowska/Picture alliance via Getty ImagesThere is no threat of reanimated dead pigs terrifying passers-by, at least yet, but porcine brain function has been revived hours after death and decapitation.
In a
paper published in the journal
Nature, researchers led by Zvonimir Vrselja from the Yale School of Medicine in the US report "the restoration and maintenance of microcirculation and molecular and cellular functions of the intact pig brain" up to four hours after death.
The findings, they write, "demonstrate that under appropriate conditions the isolated, intact large mammalian brain possesses an underappreciated capacity" for restoration. The results are at once extraordinary and, legal experts and bioethicists say, deeply concerning.
In effect, Vrselja and colleagues
have created the world's first zombie pigs.They did so by first making a fluid, dubbed BrainEx, which was fed into the vascular system of the brains of the pigs. The animals had earlier been slaughtered for meat production.
The fluid is haemoglobin-based, but contains no cells and does not coagulate. It is propelled through brain veins, arteries and capillaries in a way that mimics the pulsation of proper blood at standard body temperature.
The researchers say BrainEx promotes tissue recovery from anoxia - a lack of oxygen - reduces vascular injury, prevents fluid build-up and "metabolically supports the energy requirements of the brain".
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