US scientists have revealed that xenobots, the world’s first living robots, can now reproduce.
Scientists unveiled details about the robots last year after experiments showed they could move and self-heal. The xenobots were created using the heart and skin stem cells from the African clawed frog.
The scientists at Harvard, Tufts University, and the University of Vermont, who made the xenobots, are now saying that the tiny blobs can also self-replicate, according to a publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.
The new experiments showed that the organisms could swim out into their dish, find other single cells and assemble “baby” xenobots. After a few days, the babies will become new xenobots that will look and move exactly like the initial creation.
Moreover, according to the scientists, the new xenobots can then go out and self-replicate again.
Xenobots, which are less than a millimeter wide, are designed on a computer and hand-assembled. The scientists said they were amazed after learning that the tiny blobs could reproduce spontaneously.
“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,” said Douglas Blackiston, who worked on the study.
“This is profound,” added Michael Levin, co-leader of the research. “These cells have the genome of a frog, but, freed from becoming tadpoles, they use their collective intelligence, a plasticity, to do something astounding.”
The team said the new research could be beneficial for advancements in regenerative medicine.
“If we knew how to tell collections of cells to do what we wanted them to do, ultimately, that’s regenerative medicine — that’s the solution to traumatic injury, birth defects, cancer, and aging,” Levin said.
“All of these different problems are here because we don’t know how to predict and control what groups of cells are going to build. Xenobots are a new platform for teaching us.”
