ABOVE: A “manufactured organism” built from embryonic frog cells
SAM KRIEGMAN
Cells extracted from a frog embryo can be sculpted to create new shapes and carry out unique functions in a structure that’s not-quite-organism and not-quite-machine, researchers report today (January 13) in PNAS.
“My first reaction to the article was: Holy moly, this is potentially huge,” Pamela Lyon told The Scientist in an email. Lyon is a cognitive biologist at the University of Adelaide who was not involved in the study but is collaborating on a different project with Michael Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University and a senior author on the study.
The researchers designed and built so-called xenobots that could locomote across the bottom of a petri dish. They also designed structures that could manipulate and transport other objects. When several designs were housed together, they began to exhibit living robot-like features including “collective behaviors” such as orbiting ...
