“Cellular robotics”

By Scott Hamilton

I recently read about a research project from 2023 conducted at Tufts University around a strange area of robotics. The research group out of Medford, Mass., created tiny biological robots, called Anthrobots, from adult human tracheal cells. They discovered that these particular human cells have the ability to move across a surface and encourage growth of neurons in laboratory dishes. They hope to use this discovery to carry out specific tasks in regards to innovative healing processes to work with injury and disease.

The work was derived from previous research conducted in the laboratories of Michael Levin, Ph.D., Associate Faculty member of Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering; Vannevar Bush, Professor of Biology at Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences; and Josh Bongard, Ph.D. at the University of Vermont. The previous group created Xenobots capable of navigating passageways, collecting material, recording information, healing themselves from injury, and replicating for a few cycles on their own. They utilized frog embryo cells for the research. It was not yet determined if similar “biobots” could be constructed from cells of other species or just amphibian embryos.

I found it fascinating that scientists in the lab were able to graft groups of cells together to “program” them to complete a given task. It took years of research into how each different type of cell behaved when linked with other cells. They took the knowledge gained and learned how to link various cells to achieve a variety of tasks. In essence they were able to create artificial life from reusing existing cells. The whole process reminds me of a joke I heard years ago, which becomes less funny the closer we get to achieving the creation of life.

A group of scientists got together and approached God. They told God they no longer needed him because they were able to create life and everything they would ever need. They were able to create man from simple dirt. So God agreed to their challenge to create new life from dirt. The contest started and the scientists reached down and picked up some dirt. God said, “Wait just a minute, get your own dirt.”

So you see, even if we are able to create life, we are still a long way from creating matter from energy, and we definitely can’t master creating energy without consuming or changing matter. If we achieve the impossible, that’s when we will no longer need a creator.

The current study, published in “Advanced Science” by Michael Levin and Ph.D. student Gizem Gumuskaya, successfully built biobots from human cells. The fascinating thing was they did not have to do any genetic modification to the human cells to accomplish the task and were able to demonstrate greater capability than with their Xenobots. This experiment not only shows that human cells are superior building blocks, but begins to answer some age old questions about how cells interact with each other in the human body.

We have known for quite some time that human cells all have a unique purpose and lots of unknown rules about how they can be assembled and work together in the body. The thing we did not realize is that these same cells that fit together by a divine design to perform particular functions in the body can be taken out of their natural context and recombined in different ways. We can essentially program them to carry out new functions by design.

I could not help but think of LEGOs when I read about this research. You buy a LEGO set and it is designed to combine the various LEGOs to complete a particular model. For example, if you buy a LEGO car, it has a plan and pattern to create a car. However, as we all know, you don’t have to build a car with the LEGOs in the kit. They can be combined in new ways to create brand new things, not just cars. Levin and his team basically proved that human cells work a lot like LEGOs and can be recombined in different manners to create new forms of life.

I would say for me the scary part of this research is that while they were able to create new assemblies of human trachea cells and rearrange them to create new multi-cellular structures, it was more or less an accidental discovery that their new combination could crawl over a petri dish of human neurons and encourage new neurons to grow, healing the neural network in the dish. They really do not understand how or why it worked.

“The cellular assemblies we construct in the lab can have capabilities that go beyond what they do in the body,” said Levin, who also serves as the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts. “It is fascinating and completely unexpected that normal patient tracheal cells, without modifying their DNA, can move on their own and encourage neuron growth across a region of damage,” said Levin. “We’re now looking at how the healing mechanism works, and asking what else these constructs can do.”

The biggest advantage to Levin’s new research is that the biobots can be created from a patient’s own cells to perform therapeutic work without the risk of triggering an immune response to the treatment. They also have a limited life span in specific laboratory conditions meaning there is no risk of exposure or spread outside the lab. They also do not have the ability to reproduce, unlike the frog embryo cells, so there is no risk of them evolving beyond their designed task. If you are interested in learning more about biobots and how they are made, you can read the rest of their research at https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/scientists-build-tiny-biological-robots-from-human-cells/.

Until next week, stay safe and learn something new.

Scott Hamilton is an Expert in Emerging Technologies at ATOS and can be reached with questions and comments via email to sh*******@**********rd.org or through his website at https://www.techshepherd.org.