Name: 【TED】Andrew Pelling: This scientist makes ears out of apples (This scientist makes ears out of apples | Andrew Pelling)
Uploaded: 2016-09-13T11:46:51.000Z
Duration: 7 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm usually just looking for old electronics,

stuff I can take to my workshop and hack.

There's switches so you can turn things on and off.

so you can make a cool robot into an awesome robot.

Now, I've built a lot of stuff out of garbage,

and some of these things have even been kind of useful.

for me, garbage is just a chance to play,

to be creative and build things to amuse myself.

This is what I love doing, so I just made it part of my day job.

I lead a university-based biological research lab,

where we value curiosity and exploration above all else.

We aren't focused on any particular problem,

and we're not trying to solve any particular disease.

This is just a place where people can come

and ask fascinating questions and find answers.

that if I challenge people to build the equipment they need

was that artists and scientists from around the world

And it's not just because we value unconventional ideas,

So one day I was hacking something, I was taking it apart,

and then put it back together in some new and creative way?

Can any of you guys tell me what fruit this is?

Andrew Pelling: That's right -- it's an apple.

Now, I actually want you to notice as well

that this is a lot redder than most apples.

And that's because we grew human cells into it.

We took a totally innocent Macintosh apple,

And what we're left with after removing all the apple cells

This is the stuff that gives plants their shape and texture.

this is where all the apple cells used to be.

we implant some mammalian cells that you can see in blue.

What happens is, these guys start multiplying

it's actually really reminiscent of how our own tissues are organized.

that you can implant these scaffolds into the body,

and the body will send in cells and a blood supply

This is the point when people started asking me,

"Andrew, can you make body parts out of apples?"

And I'm like, "You've come to the right place."

and she does a lot of wood carving for a living.

"Could you, like, literally carve some ears

Listen, my lab is not in the ear-manufacturing business.

People have actually been working on this for decades.

commercial scaffolds can be really expensive and problematic,

because they're sourced from proprietary products,

is it's not that hard to make these things.

The equipment you need can be built from garbage,

and the key processing step only requires soap and water.

So what we did was put all the instructions online as open source.

And then we founded a mission-driven company,

and we're developing kits to make it easier

for anyone with a sink and a soldering iron