{"id":121158,"date":"2021-04-02T01:23:25","date_gmt":"2021-04-02T08:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/cells-form-into-xenobots-nn-their-own"},"modified":"2021-04-02T01:23:25","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T08:23:25","slug":"cells-form-into-xenobots-nn-their-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/cells-form-into-xenobots-nn-their-own","title":{"rendered":"Cells Form Into \u2018Xenobots\u2019 nn Their Own"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/cells-form-into-xenobots-nn-their-own2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The researchers let the cell clusters assemble in the right proportions and then used micro-manipulation tools to move or eliminate cells \u2014 essentially poking and carving them into shapes like those recommended by the algorithm. The resulting cell clusters showed the predicted ability to move over a surface in a nonrandom way.<\/p>\n<p>The team <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.1910837117\">dubbed these structures xenobots<\/a>. While the prefix was derived from the Latin name of the African clawed frogs (<em>Xenopus laevis<\/em>) that supplied the cells, it also seemed fitting because of its relation to <em>xenos<\/em>, the ancient Greek for \u201cstrange.\u201d These were indeed strange living robots: tiny masterpieces of cell craft fashioned by human design. And they hinted at how cells might be persuaded to develop new collective goals and assume shapes totally unlike those that normally develop from an embryo.<\/p>\n<p>But that only scratched the surface of the problem for Levin, who wanted to know what might happen if embryonic frog cells were \u201cliberated\u201d from the constraints of both an embryonic body and researchers\u2019 manipulations. \u201cIf we give them the opportunity to re-envision multicellularity,\u201d Levin said, then his question was, \u201cWhat is it that they will build?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The researchers let the cell clusters assemble in the right proportions and then used micro-manipulation tools to move or eliminate cells \u2014 essentially poking and carving them into shapes like those recommended by the algorithm. The resulting cell clusters showed the predicted ability to move over a surface in a nonrandom way. The team dubbed [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-science","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}