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Scientists say the world’s first living robot can reproduce


Formed from the stem cells of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which it gets its name, xenobots are less than a millimeter (0.04 inches) wide. The tiny blobs were first announced in 2020 after experiments showed they could move, work together in groups and heal themselves.

Now, the scientists who developed them at the University of Vermont, Tufts University and Harvard University’s Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering say they have discovered an entirely new form of reproduction different from any other. any animal or plant known to science.

“I was amazed by that,” said Michael Levin, a professor of biology and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and co-author of the new study.

“Frogs have a way of reproduction that they normally use, but when you… release (the cells) from the rest of the embryo and you give them a chance to figure out how to be in a new environment, they don’t. just think.” found a new way to move, but they also found a new way to reproduce. “

Robot or creature?

Stem cells are unspecialized cells that have the ability to develop into different cell types. To create xenobots, the researchers scraped live stem cells from frog embryos and let them incubate. There are no manipulations involving genes.

“Most people think of a robot made of metal and ceramic but not so much what a robot is made of but what it does, which is acting on its own behalf on behalf of a human,” he said. Josh Bongard, a professor of computer science and robotics expert at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study.

“In that way, it’s a robot, but it’s also clearly an organism made of unmodified frog cells.”

Bongard said they discovered that the xenobots, which were originally spherical and made of about 3,000 cells, were able to regenerate. But it happens rarely and only under specific circumstances. Bongard said the xenobots used “kinetic replication” – a process that is known to occur at the molecular level but has never been observed at the scale of whole cells or organisms.

With the help of artificial intelligence, the researchers then experimented with billions of body shapes to make the xenobots more effective at replicating this type. The supercomputer is C-shaped like Pac-Man, the 1980s video game. They discovered that it could find microscopic stem cells in a petri dish, collecting hundreds of them. inside its mouth, and a few days later, these bundles of cells become new xenobots.

The parent spins a large sphere of stem cells that are maturing into a new xenobot.

“The AI ​​didn’t programmed these machines the way we normally think about coding. It shaped, sculpted, and created this Pac-Man form,” Bongard said.

“In essence, shape is the program. Shape affects how xenobots work to amplify this incredibly surprising process.”

Xenobots are very primitive technology – think of a 1940s computer – and don’t have any real-world applications yet. However, this combination of molecular biology and artificial intelligence could be used in a wide range of tasks in the body and the environment, according to the researchers. This could include things like collecting microplastics in the ocean, root system checks, and regenerative medicine.

While the prospect of self-renewable biotechnology can be worrisome, the researchers say that the living machines are entirely contained in the lab and are easily extinguished, as they are biodegradable. studied and managed by ethics experts.

The research was funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a federal agency that oversees the development of technology for the military.

“There’s a lot that can be done if we take advantage of the cell’s flexibility and problem-solving abilities,” says Bongard.

NS research was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PNAS on Monday.

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