Skin fusing

[Tommahawk]

is it possble to fuse skin to non-biological materials such as steel or plastic, sounds crazy but imagine like a patched quilt. Where the quilt is human skin and the patch is made of steel. Their is no skin underneath the steel patch.

 

hard to explain...

[AzurePhoenix]

Like synthflesh in starwars?

[ed84c]

Im pretty sure that cells can usually only bind to other cells.

 

However they would form a VERY tight fit around some plastic if you tried, i would imagine, so it would kind of work, not very well though.

[rakuenso]

Our skin needs millions of pores for various purposes, for example sweat glands. They would also have to be directly connected to the endodermal layer of cells, which would mean you would have to skinned alive then have another sheet of porous metal (if thats possible) attached to you. Skin pores can also open and close, unlike metallic and plastic pores which would pretty much stay open... So Unless you want to be sweaty/watery all the time and eventually rust from your own sweat, do what you want

[ydoaPs]

if you are talking about artificial limbs, i guess they could be screwed into bone and the end could be made in such a way that the tissue would grow around it to secure it.

[Tommahawk]

yep, I was thinking about artificial limbs. A little sci-fi today but its got me thinking.

 

1) Inject micro-chip in (diabetics) designed to monitor bloodstream, this interfaces with rf scanner to give diabetics info. (to replace pricker). An article was written about something similar.

 

http://www.ananova.com/business/story/sm_591643.html

 

Do not know it its true though.

 

2) Bio-connection

Their are people who have to inject themselves with needles I know when I was a children I hated needles so imagine the hell some of those kids go through all the time. Now if we could invent some kind of bio-connection,

If you have watched sci-fi movies people have imagined plugging themseleves into computers via a connection on their skin. I think the movies was Fortress (furture jail movie)

So instead of a ex. diabetic having to injecting themselves all the time. They connect to the bio-coonector and put insulin into where ever it needs to go. Some things to take into account infection control. fusing cells with other materials.

 

http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/PCMagazine/2001/08/01/433873?extID=10026

[rakuenso]

if you are talking about artificial limbs, i guess they could be screwed into bone and the end could be made in such a way that the tissue would grow around it to secure it.

 

The main problem with that is getting them to grow like normal bone would... also our bones themselves are designed to be lightweight and versatile, it would be very difficult to find a replacement

[aaronmyung]

wouldn't your body reject it all?

[husmusen]

Not necessarily, they use titanium screws to bind bones together, there

are several non-interactive substances that are chemically invisable to

the human body, if it's made from one of those, what the body can't

"see" it won't get anxious about.

 

I think the biggest problem would be a potential breech or weak

point that would allow microbes to penetrate the skin in significant numbers.

Or that the implants would act as a resevoir that bacteria could

safely colonise.

That said, I was quite amaxed that PEG tubes didn't have worse problems,

that's a sort of skin/implant fusion although not quite.

 

However microbe hostile suface coatings may be an improvement to that.

But that's getting OT a bit.

 

Cheers.

 

P.S. Just noticed your loc.

avagood weekend

[Mag]

i belive they can stick to something, if they are on it long enough.

So much in fact, taht you would have to cut the skin to take it off.

 

an example would be something i read a few months back, an obese person (forget if it was man or woman) pretty much lived on the couch (for 5 years i think) - eventually she had a heart attack (or something where she needed medical assistance) and they had to take the couch with the person, because their skin was stuck to it.

 

yeah, pretty gross, kinda.

[aaronmyung]

fused to a couch :|

I can just imagine a bunch of guys trying to revive a guy with a couch stuck to him

better watch my tv hours

[Mag]

heh yeah, the only problem is i dont understand how the person could actually LIVE on the couch, unless they had some sort of way that they could get rid of their waste...

 

edit: found a news link:

http://www.nbc5.com/news/3646642/detail.html

[j_p]

Human tissue can be grown over inorganic material. The key is the surface, rather than the compositiion, of the material.

 

Check out mechanical hearts.

[aaronmyung]

was too large to get up from the couch, even to use the bathroom.

gee, I still cant get over the guy being on couch like that

Theres your answer mag. She did live on the couch. Couch was where all her waste ended up