Scientists Created the World's First Living Robots, , and Now They Can Reproduce.
CNN reports that the team of scientists who created the world's first living robots say the new life forms now have the ability to reproduce.
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The creatures are formed from the stem cells of the African clawed frog (xenopus laevis), which is why they are referred to as xenobots.
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The creatures are formed from the stem cells of the African clawed frog (xenopus laevis), which is why they are referred to as xenobots.
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In 2020, the xenobots were first unveiled after experiments showed they could move, cooperate and self-heal.
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Now, scientists say they have discovered a new form of biological reproduction unlike any other animal or plant known to science.
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The project involves teams from the University of Vermont, Tufts University and Harvard'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.
, Michael Levin, a professor of biology and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, via CNN.
Josh Bongard, the lead author of the study, said that the process is called "kinetic replication.".
Bongard told CNN that this process normally occurs at a molecular level but has never been recorded at the scale of whole cells or organisms. .
The xenobots are able to gather stem cells in a petri dish and transform them into new xenobots after a few days.
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According to CNN, despite the breakthrough, the xenobots are still an emerging technology and don't yet have a practical application.
