Video: Taiwan scientists turn gold and onions into muscles

A screen capture of Wen-Pin Shih of National Taiwan University holding up the world's first artificial muscle made from biomaterials: gilded onion cells. Photo: YouTube

You can use an onion to flavour your stir fry, keep an avocado from turning brown, and make you cry when you aren’t sad. Now, according to a new study, you can also use it to make an artificial muscle.

To be clear, no one is talking about a fist-sized onion pumping away like a heart. The first onion muscle prototypes are very small – just a few onion cells long. They were created from the thin, translucent layer of epidermal cells that lie just below the dry outer skin of the average store-bought onion.