[liberationtech] Scientists use stem cells from frogs to build first living robots

[Yosem Companys]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/13/scientists-use-stem-cells-from-frogs-to-build-first-living-robots

Researchers in the US have created the first living machines by assembling cells
from African clawed frogs into tiny robots that move around under their own
steam.  “These are entirely new lifeforms. They have never before existed on
Earth,” said Michael Levin, the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts
University in Medford, Massachusetts. “They are living, programmable organisms.”
 The robots, which are less than 1mm long, are designed by an “evolutionary
algorithm” that runs on a supercomputer. The program starts by generating random
3D configurations of 500 to 1,000 skin and heart cells. Each design is then
tested in a virtual environment, to see, for example, how far it moves when the
heart cells are set beating. The best performers are used to spawn more designs,
which themselves are then put through their paces.  Because heart cells
spontaneously contract and relax, they behave like miniature engines that drive
the robots along until their energy reserves run out. The cells have enough fuel
inside them for the robots to survive for a week to 10 days before keeling
over.  The scientists waited for the computer to churn out 100 generations
before picking a handful of designs to build in the lab. They used tweezers and
cauterising tools to sculpt early-stage skin and heart cells scraped from the
embryos of African clawed frogs, Xenopus laevis. The source of the cells led the
scientists to call their creations “xenobots”.  Xenobots might be built with
blood vessels, nervous systems and sensory cells, to form rudimentary eyes. By
building them out of mammalian cells, they could live on dry land. When damaged,
living robots can heal their wounds, and once their task is done they fall
apart, just as natural organisms decay when they die.  Their unique features
mean that future versions of the robots might be deployed to clean up
microplastic pollution in the oceans, locate and digest toxic materials, deliver
drugs in the body, or remove plaque from artery walls. “The aim is to understand
the software of life,” Levin said. “If you think about birth defects, cancer,
age-related diseases, all of these things could be solved if we knew how to make
biological structures, to have ultimate control over growth and form.” The
research is funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s
lifelong learning machines programme, which aims to recreate biological learning
processes in machines.
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