Came across this article which demonstrated the control of heart muscles in mice to induce artificial fibrillation. One may think why would we want to produce fibrillation, but the thing is if this stimulation can produce arrhythmias, it can also be modified to produce a natural heartbeat, it could become a pacemaker. Then one thinks, we already have pacemakers and they work just fine. Then again, the average life of a surgically implanted very expensive pacemaker is 5-15 years because the energy source, the battery has limited capacity. Here's the interesting part, if we use optical pacemakers, the main advantage is that these work on light production which is done by LEDs or laser sources, preferably the former, which will utilize much less energy per beat, thus increasing the life of the pace maker significantly, MANIFOLD. Thus actually reducing the requirement of another very expensivve surgery to change the pacemaker in pacemaker dependent patients. It will become HUGE a great invention to increase longevity. Eagerly awaiting its development.
The link to the original article is attached for further reference.
Only problem in the article is that it says: "Photostimulation is much more suitable: the cells will even withstand stimulations of several minutes at a time without problems. " . The actual duration of the photo stimulation as of now is limited to a few minutes, future developments will take care of this too making its use continuous and not limiting its use to a few minute or hours, but an entire life-time.
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