In True Blood, a softcore porn series about a southern restaurant, vampires are allowed to roam the earth freely because Japanese scientists discovered a way to synthesize blood. The vampires have always been around, you see, but now that they don’t depend on mauling and feeding on humans for sustenance, they can come out of the dark and assimilate into modern society.
Now, in the real world, real scientists may bring our blood-sucking brethren out of the coffin: according to Wired.co.uk, a team of researchers has been awarded a roughly $8.3 million grant to create synthetic blood by 2016. Aside from giving creatures of the night something to sip on as they hang out in stylish, dimly lit sex clubs, their work could eliminate the need for donors to give blood for transfusions.
Things are apparently going swimmingly. “At the beginning, for every one stem cell we would get one red cell,” Joanne Mountford of the University of Glasgow told Wired. “Now we get 250,000 for every one. Optimization and clarification has brought us a long way.”
Ultimately, the team is hoping to manufacture type O negative, the “universal blood type” that can be given to any recipient — and, so I’m told, the tastiest blood of all.
(Photo: @Ani Mendez)
