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A gel cocktail uses the body’s sugars to ‘grow’ electrodes in living fish

A new technique harnesses the body’s chemistry to create the conducting material

A close up photo of a clear liquid forming a bubble on what appears to be a black and gold circuit board.

A new injectable gel (pictured) can react with the body’s sugars to “grow” an electrode inside living tissue, a study in zebrafish shows.

THOR BALKHED

By Simon Makin

For the first time, researchers have harnessed the body’s own chemistry to “grow” electrodes inside the tissues of living fish, blurring the boundary between biology and machines.

The technique uses the body’s sugars to turn an injected gel into a flexible electrode without damaging tissues, experiments show.