California Dec 1 : In what is being hailed as a first of its kind triumph, some scientists have managed to create a race of robots that can reproduce on their own.
The researchers from the US had announced last year that they are going to create synthetic lifeforms that were made up of skin cells derived from frog embryos.
The creations are done now and the scientists are calling them xenobots. The name has been derived from the scientific name for the African clawed frog: Xenopus laevis.
Movie buffs who have closely followed the ‘Alien’ franchise will be able to relate to the name.
A report published by the scientists in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science states that the Xenobots were seen moving, pushing, and even carrying objects.
Co-author of the research, Professor Michael Levin, explained the breakthrough could be used in cleaning up micro-plastics, treatment of cancer, birth defects, and aging.
The xenobots are also able to reproduce on their own, but in a way that is not seen in plants and animals.
“We find that synthetic multicellular assemblies can also replicate kinematically by moving and compressing dissociated cells in their environment into functional self-copies. This form of perpetuation, previously unseen in any organism, arises spontaneously over days rather than evolving over millennia,” the study said.
The robots were developed at the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
“Frogs have a way of reproducing that they normally use but when you … liberate (the cells) from the rest of the embryo and you give them a chance to figure out how to be in a new environment, not only do they figure out a new way to move, but they also figure out apparently a new way to reproduce,” added Michael Levin.
The study’s co-author, Dr Douglas Blackiston, said in a press release that this kind of reproduction has never been onserved before.