it’s something out of a science-fiction movie – genius scientists engineer a synthetic skin that’s part living, part electronics.

But scientists at Harvard University have done just that, creating meshes of electronic and biological tissue.

The end result is cyborg tissue, which is created from electrodes and wires combined on a Nano-scale.

The results, published in Nature Materials, detail how scientists in the lab embedded electrical nanowires into the lab-grown flesh. ‘Ultimately, this is about merging tissue with electronics in a way that it becomes difficult to determine where the tissue ends and the electronics begin.’

Normal human skin is capable of sensing oxygen, pH, and other elements in the air, and reacts to each one accordingly.

The challenge, then, was engineering skin that would do the same.First, a 3D mesh of organic polymer is laid out with nanoscale wires within. According to Nature Materials, the wires serve as ‘critical sensing elements.’ Then, they worked in human neurons, heart cells, and blood vessels.

When the substrate was dissolved, researchers had mesh they could contour into the shapes they needed.

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