{"id":12302,"date":"2023-12-01T01:47:32","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T01:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/01\/tiny-living-robots-made-from-human-cells-surprise-scientists\/"},"modified":"2023-12-01T01:47:32","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T01:47:32","slug":"tiny-living-robots-made-from-human-cells-surprise-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/01\/tiny-living-robots-made-from-human-cells-surprise-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiny living robots made from human cells surprise scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have created tiny living robots from human cells that can move around <\/strong>in a lab dish and may one day be able to help heal wounds or damaged tissue, according to a new study. <\/p>\n

A team at Tufts University and Harvard University\u2019s Wyss Institute have dubbed these creations anthrobots. The research builds on earlier work from some of the same scientists, who made the first living robots, or xenobots, from stem cells sourced from embryos of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis). <\/p>\n

\u201cSome people thought that the features of the xenobots relied a lot on the fact that they are embryonic and amphibian,\u201d said study author Michael Levin, Vannevar Bush professor of biology at Tufts\u2019 School of Arts & Sciences. <\/strong> <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think this has anything to do with being an embryo. This has nothing to do with being a frog. I think this is a much more general property of living things,\u201d he said. <\/strong> <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t realize all the competencies that our own body cells have.\u201d <\/p>\n

While alive, the anthrobots were not full-fledged organisms because they didn\u2019t have a full life cycle, <\/strong>Levin said.\u00a0 <\/strong> <\/p>\n

\u201cIt reminds us that these harsh binary categories that we\u2019ve operated with: Is that a robot, is that an animal, is that a machine? <\/strong>These kinds of things don\u2019t serve us very well. We need to get beyond that.\u201d <\/strong> <\/p>\n

The research was published Thursday in the journal Advanced Science. <\/p>\n

How did they make them?<\/h3>\n

The scientists used adult human cells from the trachea, or windpipe, from anonymous donors of different ages and sexes. Researchers zeroed in on this type of cell because they\u2019re relatively easy to access due to work on Covid-19 and lung disease and, more importantly, because of a feature the scientists believed would make the cells capable of motion, said study coauthor Gizem Gumuskaya, a doctoral student at Tufts. <\/p>\n

The tracheal cells are covered with hairlike projections called cilia that wave back and forth. They usually help the tracheal cells push out tiny particles that find their way into air passages of the lungs. Earlier studies had also shown that the cells can form organoids \u2014 clumps of cells widely used for research. <\/p>\n

Gumuskaya experimented with the chemical composition of the tracheal cells\u2019 growth conditions and found a way to encourage the cilia to face outward on the organoids. Once she had found the right matrix, the organoids became mobile after a few days, with the cilia acting a bit like oars. <\/p>\n

\u201cNothing happened on day one, day two, day four or five, but as biology usually does, around day seven, there was a rapid transition,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was like a blossoming flower. By day seven, the cilia had flipped and were on the outside. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn our method, each anthrobot grows from a single cell.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s this self-assembly that makes them unique. Biological robots have been made by other scientists, but they were constructed by hand by making a mold and seeding cells to live on top of it, Levin said. <\/p>\n

Different shapes and sizes<\/h3>\n

The anthrobots the team created weren\u2019t identical. <\/p>\n

Some were spherical and fully covered in cilia, while others were shaped more like a football and covered irregularly with cilia. They also moved in different ways \u2014 some in straight lines, some in tight circles, while others sat around and wiggled, according to a news release on the study. They survived up to 60 days in laboratory conditions. <\/p>\n

The experiments outlined in this latest study are at an early stage, but the goal is to find out whether the anthrobots could have medical applications, Levin and Gumuskaya said. To see whether such applications might be possible, researchers examined whether the anthrobots were able to move over human neurons grown in a lab dish that had been \u201cscratched\u201d to mimic damage. <\/p>\n

They were surprised to see the anthrobots encouraged growth to the damaged region of the neurons, although the researchers don\u2019t yet understand the <\/strong>healing mechanism, the study noted. <\/p>\n

Falk Tauber, a group leader at the Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies at the University of Freiburg in Germany, said that the study provided a baseline for future efforts to use the bio-bots for different functions and make them in different forms. <\/p>\n

Tauber, who was not involved in the research, said the anthrobots exhibited \u201csurprising behavior,\u201d in particular when they moved across \u2014 and ultimately closed \u2014scratches in the human neurons. <\/p>\n

He said the ability to create these structures from a patient\u2019s own cells suggested diverse applications both in the lab and perhaps ultimately within humans. \u00a0<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Levin said he didn\u2019t think the anthrobots posed any ethical or safety concerns. They are not made from human embryos, research that is tightly restricted, or genetically modified in any way, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey have a very circumscribed environment that they live in, so there\u2019s no possibility that they somehow get out or live outside the lab. They can\u2019t live outside that very specific environment,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have a natural life span so after a few weeks, they just seamlessly biodegrade.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists have created tiny living robots from human cells that can move around in a lab dish and may one day be able to help heal wounds or damaged tissue, according to a new study. A team at Tufts University and Harvard University\u2019s Wyss Institute have dubbed these creations anthrobots. The research builds on earlier <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}