Toward autonomous self-organizing biological robots with a nervous system

Amazing stuff! Robots don't have to be cold machines! 😊

When will humans and robots converge?

"Biobots, whose growing line of variants started with Xenobots, are fascinating tiny self-powered living robots built exclusively using frog embryonic cells. Originally developed in the laboratories ..., biobots are remarkably motile, moving autonomously through aqueous environments. Since then, the team has shed light on many exciting properties of biobots, including their ability for kinematic self-replication, and responding to sound stimuli.

Biobots can similarly be constructed using human cells in the form of Anthrobots, which have the ability to heal neural wounds in vitro.  Thus, a vision emerged that biobots, made out of patients’ own cells, could one day be deployed to repair spinal cord or retinal nerve damage, clear plaques from the arteries, locally deliver pro-regenerative drugs, and perform other vital tasks in the human body. More fundamentally, ... “Such novel beings, exhibiting both new morphology and behavior, despite their wild-type unmodified genome, can reveal important aspects of multicellular plasticity, of relevance to evolutionary biology, bioengineering, and regenerative medicine. They uniquely enable us to investigate questions like ‘What is the origin of anatomical and physiological properties in living forms that have no history of selection for those traits?’ and ‘What determines the range of possible forms, functions, and lifestyles that a given genome can facilitate?’” ...

Now, ... creating the first “neurobots,” which essentially are biobots that with the help of a micro-surgical technique are integrated with neuronal precursor cells and allowed to grow unperturbed. The study shows that novel types of nervous systems self-organize within neurobots with neuronal processes extending in between neurons as well as towards non-neuronal cells lining the surface of the bots. Target cells include multiciliated cells (MCCs) that allow biobots to be motile, mucus-secreting goblet cells which among other functions facilitate ciliary beating, ionocytes that regulate the balance of ions, and small secretory cells (SSCs) that produce MCC-stimulating molecules. ..."

From the abstract:

" ...These ‘biobots’ are autonomous, self-powered, and able to move through aqueous environments.

Here, we report a new type of biobot, the neurobot, composed of mucociliary epidermis and neural tissue. We show that neural precursor cells implanted in explanted Xenopus ectodermal tissue develop into mature neurons, extending processes both toward the surface and among each other.

These self-organized neurobots exhibit unique morphology, more complex movements, and different responses to neuroactive drugs compared to non-neuronal counterparts. Calcium imaging confirms neuronal activity in neurobots. Transcriptomics reveals increased transcript variability, expression of genes related to nervous system development, a shift toward ancient genes, and up-regulation of neuronal genes linked to visual perception."

Toward autonomous self-organizing biological robots with a nervous system "In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers demonstrate that functional nervous systems can form within self-organized living cellular robots, conferring complex movement patterns and distinct gene expression profiles"

Engineered Living Systems With Self-Organizing Neural Networks: From Anatomy to Behavior and Gene Expression (open access)

The team made an important step towards creating self-organizing biological robots with a functional nervous system. As can be seen in this image, neurobots are made of an outer surface consisting of multicilliated cells, mucus-secreting goblet cells, ionocytes, and small secretory cells, and a nervous system that reaches out to surface cells underneath.

Fig. 1 Construction and development of a neurobot.