The development of human beings from fertilized eggs to an adult body is often described as a “genetic program”. Is it possible that, like a computer program, our genetic system contains easter eggs accessible only from precise and unusual conditions?
A US-based team, consisting of Sam Kriegman, Douglas Blackiston, Michael Levin and Josh Bongard, has recently published a paper suggesting the answer is yes.
The team are pioneering the use of tiny autonomous robots made from living cells, with the hope they may be useful in fields such as medicine: imagine robots that can patrol the body and repair it.
Their latest work sought a way for their biorobots to reproduce, and began with a particular cell type from early frog embryos. Like all frog cells, these contained the normal genetic program that controls the familiar life cycle, from egg to tadpole to frog to more eggs.
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The researchers did nothing to alter this natural genome. Instead, they placed the cells in culture, and piled some of them into small mounds while leaving the others as scattered single cells.
The mounds matured and gained the ability to move, thanks to the development and beating of small whip-like protrusions, cilia, on their lower surface.
