paper:doi-10-1126-scirobotics-abf1571A cellular platform for the development of synthetic living machines
Original abstract (expand)
) cells. These xenobots exhibit coordinated locomotion via cilia present on their surface. These cilia arise through normal tissue patterning and do not require complicated construction methods or genomic editing, making production amenable to high-throughput projects. The biological robots arise by cellular self-organization and do not require scaffolds or microprinting; the amphibian cells are highly amenable to surgical, genetic, chemical, and optical stimulation during the self-assembly process. We show that the xenobots can navigate aqueous environments in diverse ways, heal after damage, and show emergent group behaviors. We constructed a computational model to predict useful collective behaviors that can be elicited from a xenobot swarm. In addition, we provide proof of principle for a writable molecular memory using a photoconvertible protein that can record exposure to a specific wavelength of light. Together, these results introduce a platform that can be used to study many aspects of self-assembly, swarm behavior, and synthetic bioengineering, as well as provide versatile, soft-body living machines for numerous practical applications in biomedicine and the environment.
Related work— refs + corpus + external arXiv
Cited / in-corpus / arXiv badges show which signals surfaced each row. Multi-source rows weighted higher.
- Microelectronic Morphogenesis: Progress towards Artificial OrganismsDaniil Karnaushenko, Minshen Zhu and Oliver G. Schmidt John S. McCaskill2024≈ 74%
- Social Technologies for Developing Collective Intelligence in Networked SocietyBirute Pitrenaite-Zileniene, Edgaras Leichteris, Zaneta Paunksniene, Monika Maciuliene Aelita Skarzauskiene2014≈ 74%
- ≈ 73%
- ≈ 73%
- On the Implicit and on the Artificial - Morphogenesis and Emergent Aesthetics in Autonomous Collective SystemsVitorino Ramos2007≈ 73%
- Hybrid Life: Integrating Biological, Artificial, and Cognitive SystemsHiroyuki Iizuka, Olaf Witkowski, Lana Sinapayen, Keisuke Suzuki Manuel Baltieri2023≈ 73%
- Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substratesin corpus2024≈ 73%
- LIFE -- an energy efficient advanced continual learning agentic AI framework for frontier systemsGurudutt Hosangadi Anne Lee2026≈ 72%
- Metarobotics for Industry and Society: Vision, Technologies, and OpportunitiesEric Guiffo Kaigom2024≈ 71%
- Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AIArslan Ali, Maciej Bala, Yogesh Balaji, Erik Barker, Tiffany Cai, Prithvijit Chattopadhyay, Yongxin Chen, Yin Cui, Yifan Ding, Daniel Dworakowski, Jiaojiao Fan, Michele Fenzi, Francesco Ferroni, Sanja Fidler, Dieter Fox, Songwei Ge, Yunhao Ge, Jinwei Gu, Siddharth Gururani, Ethan He, Jiahui Huang, Jacob Huffman, Pooya Jannaty, Jingyi Jin, Seung Wook Kim, Gergely Kl\'ar, Grace Lam, Shiyi Lan, Laura Leal-Taixe, Anqi Li, Zhaoshuo Li, Chen-Hsuan Lin, Tsung-Yi Lin, Huan Ling, Ming-Yu Liu, Xian Liu, Alice Luo, Qianli Ma, Hanzi Mao, Kaichun Mo, Arsalan Mousavian, Seungjun Nah, Sriharsha Niverty, David Page, Despoina Paschalidou, Zeeshan Patel, Lindsey Pavao, Morteza Ramezanali, Fitsum Reda, Xiaowei Ren, Vasanth Rao Naik Sabavat, Ed Schmerling, Stella Shi, Bartosz Stefaniak, Shitao Tang, Lyne Tchapmi, Przemek Tredak, Wei-Cheng Tseng, Jibin Varghese, Hao Wang, Haoxiang Wang, Heng Wang, Ting-Chun Wang, Fangyin Wei, Xinyue Wei, Jay Zhangjie Wu, Jiashu Xu, Wei Yang, Lin Yen-Chen, Xiaohui Zeng, Yu Zeng, Jing Zhang, Qinsheng Zhang, Yuxuan Zhang, Qingqing Zhao, Artur Zolkowski NVIDIA: Niket Agarwal2025≈ 71%
- ≈ 71%
- Logical Evaluation of Consciousness: For Incorporating Consciousness into Machine ArchitectureR.R. Panda C.N. Padhy2010≈ 71%
- Neural cellular automata: applications to biology and beyond classical AIMichael Levin, L\'eo Pio-Lopez Benedikt Hartl2025≈ 71%
- Darwin's agential materials: evolutionary implications of multiscale competency in developmental biologyin corpus2023≈ 71%
- ≈ 70%
- ≈ 70%
- A Theory of Consciousness from a Theoretical Computer Science Perspective: Insights from the Conscious Turing MachineManuel Blum Lenore Blum2022≈ 70%
- ≈ 70%
- The scaling of goals via homeostasis: an evolutionary simulation, experiment and analysisJohanna Bischof, Jennifer V. LaPalme, and Michael Levin Leo Pio-Lopez2022≈ 70%
- A Machine Consciousness architecture based on Deep Learning and Gaussian ProcessesMart\'in Molina Eduardo C. Garrido Merch\'an2020≈ 70%
- Endless forms most beautiful 2.0: teleonomy and the bioengineering of chimaeric and synthetic organismsin corpus2023≈ 70%
- The computational boundary of a 'self': developmental bioelectricity drives multicellularity and scale-free cognitionin corpus2019≈ 70%
- cimcWhitepaperin corpus≈ 68%
- The biogenic approach to cognitionin corpus2005≈ 68%
- ≈ 68%
- ≈ 68%
- ≈ 67%
- Developmental Bioelectricity: the cognitive glue enabling evolutionary scaling from physiology to mindin corpus2023≈ 67%
- ≈ 66%
Similar preprints — Semantic Scholar
Cited by (8)
- Developmental Bioelectricity: the cognitive glue enabling evolutionary scaling from physiology to mind
Developmental bioelectricity—the network of ion channels, gap junctions, and neurotransmitter-mediated Vmem (membrane potential) dynamics operating across all body cells, not just neurons—functions as
- Darwin's agential materials: evolutionary implications of multiscale competency in developmental biology
Cellular collectives operating between the genotype and anatomical phenotype constitute an agential substrate that fundamentally reshapes the evolutionary search process—this is the central claim of L
- Design for an Individual: Connectionist Approaches to the Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality
Evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETIs) require interaction structures among lower-level units that compute non-linearly separable functions — the same class of functions that single-layer Pe
- Self-Improvising Memory: A Perspective on Memories as Agential, Dynamically Reinterpreting Cognitive Glue
Memory's function is not fidelity but salience preservation through active reinterpretation—a claim Levin defends by unifying phenomena from caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis (where training-indu
- Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence
Care—defined as concern for the alleviation of stress (the delta between current and optimal states)—is proposed as the substrate-independent invariant that unifies biology, Buddhist philosophy, and a
- Endless forms most beautiful 2.0: teleonomy and the bioengineering of chimaeric and synthetic organisms
Cellular collectives exhibit goal-directed competency that is substrate-independent, composition-independent, and origin-independent — a property Clawson and Levin term teleonomy — and this invariant,
- Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds
TAME—Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere—formalizes a non-binary, empirically grounded framework for recognizing, comparing, and manipulating cognition across radically diverse substrates, from
- Generalizing frameworks for sentience beyond natural species
Criteria anchored to vertebrate neuroanatomy and verbal behavior — exemplified by the Smith & Boyd (1991) framework and the Turing Test — are structurally inadequate for the full space of possible sen