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Xenobots: replicating living robots made from frog cells

Author: giuliomagnifico

Score: 51

Comments: 11

Date: 2021-11-30 07:42:51

Web Link

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thread_id wrote at 2021-11-30 12:06:40:

"“This is profound,” says Levin. “These cells have the genome of a frog, but, freed from becoming tadpoles, they use their collective intelligence, a plasticity, to do something astounding.” In earlier experiments, the scientists were amazed that Xenobots could be designed to achieve simple tasks. Now they are stunned that these biological objects—a computer-designed collection of cells — will spontaneously replicate. “We have the full, unaltered frog genome,” says Levin, “but it gave no hint that these cells can work together on this new task,” of gathering and then compressing separated cells into working self-copies."

What could possibly go wrong here?

Gravityloss wrote at 2021-11-30 12:56:37:

Reminds me of people having pet axolotls and then finding out that they glow in the dark because their ancestor was used in some research way back and were inserted with that gene.

imtringued wrote at 2021-11-30 12:57:10:

Just design an artificial predator.

Tomte wrote at 2021-11-30 12:08:40:

Ars is a bit reserved:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/mobile-clusters-of-c...

(Interesting research, but no, we don’t have living, reproducing robots)

jkingsman wrote at 2021-11-30 08:26:13:

polskibus wrote at 2021-11-30 08:40:37:

What useful function can they perform apart from reproducing? Can they move towards designated target? Can they carry microscopic load?

DiogoSnows wrote at 2021-11-30 09:48:19:

I guess if the worst case scenario does not happen (

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo

) there will be some health applications with targeting certain types of cells/viruses/etc.

Very interesting technology! I’d be curious to see the commercial applications down the line too, not so curious about the potential hyper targeted invisible weaponry possibilities though

ricksunny wrote at 2021-11-30 10:35:02:

This from the PI (below); I'm afraid I'm starting to "lose the plot" on how researchers justify the value of controversial work to ethics committees & grant disbursers.

'Bongard points to the COVID epidemic and the hunt for a vaccine. “The speed at which we can produce solutions matters deeply. If we can develop technologies, learning from Xenobots, where we can quickly tell the AI,: ‘We need a biological tool that does X and Y and suppresses Z,’ —that could be very beneficial. Today, that takes an exceedingly long time.” The team aims to accelerate how quickly people can go from identifying a problem to generating solutions—"like deploying living machines to pull microplastics out of waterways or build new medicines,” Bongard says.

“We need to create technological solutions that grow at the same rate as the challenges we face,” Bongard says. '

https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/team-builds-first-living-robot...

krageon wrote at 2021-11-30 10:37:01:

> grow at the same rate as the challenges we face

Given that the challenges grow exponentially as we mess more and more things up, I guess the objective really is grey goo.

tempodox wrote at 2021-11-30 13:05:18:

I'd already be happy with frogobots washing my dishes for me. But I could never be sure they don't start eating my kitchen instead. Anyway, I'd call that species “rana experimentalis frivole” instead of the PR gimmick “xenobot”.

giuliomagnifico wrote at 2021-11-30 09:03:41:

One step at time, I think they will study new functions for these, probably something related to the biomedical ambit.