Recently, a beautiful student, Gizem Gumuskaya, and her mentor and team, published their latest research in the journal Advanced Science.
The title of this article is:
motile living biobots self-construct from adult human somatic progenitor seed cells
These words are understood as "motile" for those that are able to move, "living biobots" for living biological robots, "self-construct" for self-construction, and "adult human somatic progenitor seed cells" for human somatic progenitor cells.
Therefore, judging from this title, it is mainly talking about a biological robot that can self-build, move, and be cultivated from human cells.
What is the potential space for cells with wild-type genomes to be induced to construct possible functional morphologies?This question is at the heart of fundamental questions in evolution, development, cellular, and synthetic biology.
Here, today's researchers are increasingly attracted to a rapidly evolving field of how to construct a new type of active life structure: biological robots.
There are two main reasons why this multidisciplinary effort is of great interest.
First, it offers the possibility of using engineering to achieve results that are too complex to be directly micromanaged, and therefore has the potential to revolutionize efforts to produce complex tissues for clinical applications in regenerative medicine and beyond.
Secondly, by using the plasticity of morphogenetic tissues to strengthen the control of the morphology and behavior of cell collectives, it is possible to develop self-constructed living structures through design with excellent and programmable functional characteristics and numerous practical uses, which greatly expands the application field of robots.
Tufts University and Harvard University'Researchers at the Wyss Institute have created tiny biorobots from human tracheal cells, which they call anthrobots, cells that can move around surfaces and have been found to promote the growth of neurons in damaged areas in laboratory dishes.
This work stems from early research by Michael Levin, professor of biology at Vannevar Bush at Tufts University's College of Arts and Sciences, and the lab of Josh Bongard at the University of Vermont, who created multicellular biorobots called Xenobots from frog embryonic cells.
In simple terms, each anthrobot starts out as a single cell from an adult donor.
Through the outward-facing growth conditions and scientific treatments developed by the researchers, these cells become biological robots with different movement shapes and types.
This part is too academic, and I am afraid that the average person does not need to know too much.
Researchers say that additional functions can be added to Anthrobots (e.g., contributed by different cells) that can be designed to respond to the environment and travel through the body and perform functions.
Researchers are currently envisaging some applications for these biorobots, some of which may already be being studied.
For example, these tiny robots, made from human cells, can repair damaged nerve tissue.
These robots, called anthrobots, are made up of human tracheal cells that are capable of locomotion and self-assembly, making them ideal candidates for delivering ** agents to specific locations in the body.
These tiny robots will be used to repair spinal cord or retinal nerve damage.
Overall, this is a fairly impactful study that these tiny biological institutions made from human cells could pave the way for personalized medicine**, marking a leap forward in regenerative medicine and biotechnology.