2020/01/13 by Sam Kriegman, Douglas Blackiston, Michael Levin +1 · 5 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence #Micro and Nano Robotics #3D Printing in Biomedical Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.1910837117
openalex publication_date 2020/01/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Living systems are more robust, diverse, complex, and supportive of human life than any technology yet created. However, our ability to create novel lifeforms is currently limited to varying existing organisms or bioengineering organoids in vitro. Here we show a scalable pipeline for creating functional novel lifeforms: AI methods automatically design diverse candidate lifeforms in silico to perform some desired function, and transferable designs are then created using a cell-based construction toolkit to realize living systems with the predicted behaviors. Although some steps in this pipeline still require manual intervention, complete automation in future would pave the way to designing and deploying unique, bespoke living systems for a wide range of functions.