Xenobots—living robots made from the stem cells of the African frog (Xenopus laevis)—had already impressed researchers by moving, healing themselves, and even spontaneously piling up debris that was strewn about. But when those small synthetic particles were replaced with loose stem cells, the little living bots did something remarkable: they brought those cells together, constructing new xenobots.
“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,” Harvard University synthetic biologist and roboticist Sam Kriegman, co-lead author on the PNAS paper describing the discovery, says in a press release from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute.
Xenobots were first born when scientists extracted skin stem cells from frog embryos and cultured them in salt water. All on their own, the cells clumped together and cells on the outside of these clumps developed cilia, which ...
