Its DNA is 100% that of a frog, but it is a robot. Researchers in the United States have managed to create a programmable robot based on frog cells.
They are cyborgs, halfway between the living organism and the robot. Researchers in the United States have managed to create a programmable robot from living organic frog tissue. This feat is due to American scientists from the University of Vermont and Tufts, who specify in their study published in the PNAS journal that it is “neither traditional robots nor a known animal species, but of a new category of artifact: a living and programmable organism. “
The researchers also had the good idea to detail the experience on YouTube. It all starts with a supercomputer, the UVM Deep Green. The machine was used as a simulation to establish “a new form of life” based on a selective algorithm based on the theory of evolution. For months, the machine worked out different possible configurations, and the researchers waited for the 100th generation of viable models before sending some to the researchers at Tufts University, who had the difficult task of bringing the concept. They started with skin and muscle stem cells from xenopus laevis, frogs that usually live in Africa. These cells were then “shaped” from the model generated by Deep Green.
Thus were born xenobots, small creatures halfway between the robot and the living organism. Above all, they have the advantage of being able to regenerate, unlike a robot, are fully biodegradable and configurable. If this new life form remains very basic to this day, the researchers behind this experiment believe that xenobots could very well be used as medical tools capable of wandering in the human body, but also to detect materials radioactive and even clean up the oceans.
