Scientists Who Created World’s First Living Robots Built from Frog Cells That Can Reproduce. In 2020, a team of scientists have announced that they would create synthetic lifeforms made up of skin cells and heart muscle cells derived from frog embryos. These creations are called Xenobots, and they came from the scientific name for the African clawed frog: Xenopus Laevis.
Fortunately, scientists have succeeded in creating robots that can be developed on their own. According to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Xenobots have been shown to move, push, and transport objects, which can be useful for cleaning microplastics or in medical field.
New research report shows that world’s first living robots built from frog cells, called Xenobots can self-reproduce.
Co-author Michael Levin discusses how it could be the solution to traumatic injury, aging, cancer, and birth defects enhance the ability to tell the robots what to do. But xenobots have been found to reproduce and do so in ways that scientists have never seen before.
“We find that synthetic multicellular assemblies can also replicate kinematically by moving and compressing disassociated cells in their environment into functional self-copies. This form of perpetuation, previously unseen in any organism, arises spontaneously over days rather than evolving over millennia.” The study stated.
The C-shaped xenobots collect and compress loosed stem cells into piles which then mature into offspring.
In a press release via IFLScience, the study’s co-author Dr. Douglas Blackiston also revealed that “People have thought for quite a long time that we’ve worked out all the ways that life can reproduce or replicate. But this is something that’s never been observed before.” The Lead Author Dr. Sam Kriegman added: “These are frog cells replicating in a way that is very different from how frogs do it. No animal or plant known to science replicates in this way.”
Nonetheless, the team has since observed that synthetic lifeforms would die after reproducing, which is inefficient regarding playing God and technically making things better. They consulted their artificial intelligence supercomputer and requested it to develop a design that would ensure it stayed alive after making self-copies.
However, it’s stated that Xenobots could be the solution to traumatic injury, birth defects, cancer, and aging.
After months and and different calculations, the supercomputer developed a complete blueprint that the Xenobots, could be made from, and it was something like Pac-Man. Dr. Kriegman explains, “It’s not very intuitive. It sounds very simple, but it’s not something a human engineer can come up with. We sent the results to Doug, and he built these Pac-Man-shaped parent Xenobots.”
“Then those parents built children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-grandchildren. On the other hand, the team has applied for self-replicating biotechnology and are at the moment contained in the lab. Similarly, they have been vetted by federal state and institutional ethics experts.
