Led by Anthony Atala (pictured right - what you expected a picture of an engineered rabbit penis?), the team has engineered several organs by spraying cells onto a collagen structure, bathing them in growth-stimulating compounds, and cooking them at body temperature. The technique has worked well enough that lab-grown bladders have been implanted in humans.
The penis proved a more complicated challenge than the bladder, but the latest results have been successful enough that rabbits have been able to do what rabbits do best. After replacing the corpus cavernosa from several rabbits with lab-grown versions eight of the rabbits were able to do-the-deed, with four of them actually fathering baby bunnies.
No word on whether Dr. Atala's erectile achievement will be memorialized on the Wake Forest campus à la Mendeleev's periodic table.
Sources:
Wired
ABC News
US News (photo)
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