A color image shows the multicellular structure of a human robot, whose surface is surrounded by cilia, allowing it to move and explore its environment.
Scientists have created miniature living robots out of human cells that can move around a lab dish and may one day be able to help wounds or damaged tissue, according to a new study.
A team of researchers at Tufts University and Harvard's Weiss Institute refer to these creations as human robots. The research builds on the earlier work of scientists who extracted stem cells from the embryos of Xenopus laevis to create the first living robots or xenorobots.
Some argue that the characteristics of xenobots depend heavily on the fact that they are embryos and amphibians," said Michael Levine, author of the study and a professor of biology at the Tufts College of Arts and Sciences, Vannevar Bush.
I don't think it has anything to do with embryos. It has nothing to do with the identity of the frog. I think it's a more general attribute of living things," he said.
We are unaware of all the abilities that our own body cells have. ”
Levine says that when human robots are alive, they are not full-fledged organisms because they do not have a full life cycle.
It reminds us of these harsh binary classifications we've been dealing with: is that a robot?Is it an animal?Or is it a machine?These things don't help us very well. We need to go beyond that. ”
The study was published Thursday in the journal Advanced Science.
Gizem Gumuskaya is a PhD student at Tufts University who helped create human robots.
How are they made?
The scientists used ** cells from the trachea or trachea of anonymous donors of different ages and genders. Gizem Gumuskaya, a PhD student at Tufts University and co-author of the study, said researchers focused their attention on this type of cells because they are relatively easy to obtain, because they are relatively easy to study for COVID-19 and lung disease, and more importantly, because scientists believe that such cells have the ability to move.
Tracheal cells are covered with hair-like protrusions called cilia, which fluctuate back and forth. They usually help the tracheal cells push tiny particles into the airways of the lungs. Early studies have also shown that these cells can form organoids – clusters of cells that are widely used in research.
Scientists have created chimeric monkeys with two sets of DNA.
Gumuskaya experimented with the chemical composition of tracheal cell growth conditions and found a way to push cilia outward on organoids. Once she found the right substrate, the organoids were ready to move after a few days, and the cilia acted a bit like paddles.
Nothing happened on the first, second, fourth, or fifth days, but around the seventh day, as biology usually does, there was a rapid shift," she said. "It's like a blooming flower. On the seventh day, the cilia turned out and grew outside.
In our approach, each human robot is grown from a single cell. ”
It is this self-assembly that makes them unique. Other scientists have also made biological robots, but they are all made by hand by making a mold and then seeding cells on it, Levine said.
Every human robot grows from a single cell.
Different shapes and sizes
The human robots created by the team are not identical.
Some are spherical and completely covered with cilia, while others are shaped more like a football and are irregularly covered with cilia. According to the study's press release, they also move differently – some walk in a straight line, some walk in small circles, and some sit and wriggle. They survived for 60 days under laboratory conditions.
The experiments outlined in the latest study are still in their early stages, but the goal is to find out if the robot can have a medical application, Guluskaya said. To see if such an application is feasible, the researchers examined whether the human robot was able to move over human neurons grown in laboratory dishes that had been "scratched" to mimic injury.
The study noted that they were surprised to find that the robot promoted the growth of damaged areas of neurons, although the researchers did not yet understand its healing mechanism.
Falk Tauber, a research group leader at the Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies at the University of Freiburg in Germany, said the research provides a benchmark for future efforts to use biorobots for different functions and make them in different forms.
A green humanoid robot grows on a scratch of red neuronal tissue.
Tauber, who was not involved in the study, said the human robots exhibited "surprising behavior", especially when they passed through and eventually closed scratches in human neurons.
The ability to harness a patient's own cells to create these structures demonstrates multiple applications in the laboratory and, eventually, in humans, he said.
Levine said he doesn't think the robots pose any ethical or safety concerns. They are not made from human embryos, nor are they subject to severely restricted research, nor have they been genetically modified in any way, he said.
They live in very limited circumstances, so it is impossible for them to somehow leave or live outside of the lab. They can't live outside of that very specific environment," he said. "They have a natural lifespan, so after a few weeks, they biodegrade seamlessly. ”
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