Robots Need DNA too

DNA, it seems, never ceases to amaze.  It's not enough that it powers all known forms of life on our planet, in all types of organisms, under a dizzying array of conditions.  It's not enough that we're slowly but steadily cracking the code to find out what it is doing, and even starting to purposely modify it.  Heck, it's not even enough that we're figuring out how to store other information in it, and even to use it for computing.

Now scientists are using it to create new kinds of "lifelike" mechanisms.   Pandora, we may have found your box.

DASH-created "lifelike" material.  Credit: John Munson/Cornell University

Researchers from Cornell recently reported on their advances.  They used something called DASH -- DNA-based Assembly and Synthesis of Hierarchical -- to create "a DNA material with capabilities of metabolism, in addition to self-assembly and organization – three key traits of life."

Professor Dan Luo, one of the researchers, said:

We are introducing a brand-new, lifelike material concept powered by its very own artificial metabolism. We are not making something that’s alive, but we are creating materials that are much more lifelike than have ever been seen before.

 In the following video, Professor Luo explained that "what we are trying to do is make materials live."

That sends chills up my spine, and not necessarily in a good way. 

Lead author Shogo Hamada elaborated:

The designs are still primitive, but they showed a new route to create dynamic machines from biomolecules. We are at a first step of building lifelike robots by artificial metabolism.  Even from a simple design, we were able to create sophisticated behaviors like racing. Artificial metabolism could open a new frontier in robotics.

The reference to racing in his quote refers to the fact their their mechanisms were capable to motion -- likened to how slime mold moves -- and they literally had their "lifelike materials" racing each other.  If I'm reading the research paper correctly, the mechanisms were even capable of hindering their competitor: "the faster moving body could affect and alter the state of another track to Decay, thus slowing down the locomotion of the body at the other track by triggering the degeneration."

Well, that's lifelike, all right.

Credit: Hamada, et. alia, Science Robotics

It wasn't all days at the race track; oh-by-the-way, they also demonstrated its potential for pathogen detection, which sounds like it could prove pretty useful.

These mechanisms eat, grow, move, replicate, evolve,and die.  Dr. Luo says: "More excitingly, the use of DNA gives the whole system a self-evolutionary possibility.  That is huge."  Dr. Hamada adds: "Ultimately, the system may lead to lifelike self-reproducing machines."

Those chills are back.

The paper concluded with several potential uses for their work:

• "It is not difficult to envision that the material could be integrated as a locomotive element in biomolecular machines and robots (29, 41–50). 
• The DASH patterns could be easily recognized by naked eyes or smartphones, which may lead to better detection technologies that are more feasible in point-of-care settings. 
• DASH may also be used as a template for other materials, for example, to create dynamic waves of protein expression or nanoparticle assemblies. 
• In addition, we envision that further expansion of artificial metabolism may be used for self-sustaining structural components (51) and self-adapting substrates for chemical production pathways."

It's just beginning.

There has been a lot of attention on engineering advances that will allow for nanobots, including uses with our bodies and so-called "soft robots," but we should be given equal attention to what is called synthetic biology.

Credit: The Scientist

Synthetic biology isn't necessarily or even predominately about creating new kinds of biology, as the researchers at Cornell are doing, but reprogramming existing forms of life. They're being programmed to eat CO2 (thus helping with global warming), help with recycling, get rid of toxic wastes, even make medicines. 

A Columbia researcher believes that new techniques for programming bacteria, for example, "will help us personalize medical treatments by creating a patient’s cancer in a dish, and rapidly identify the best therapy for the specific individual."

In the not-too-distant future, we're going to be programming lifeforms and "lifelike materials" t do our bidding at the molecular or cellular level.  People have speculated on swarms of nanobots patrolling our bodies to ensure our health, but that may be a too mechanistic view of the future.  Those nanobots may be less engineering marvels than biological ones, and their programming may recreate the evolution versus intelligent design debate.  

Humans once thought our species was unique, until evolution taught us that we are related to all the others.  We then thought that surely our genome was certainly bigger and more "complex" than those of other species, until we discovered that neither is really true.  More recently, we've realized that "we" aren't even uniquely human; in addition to our DNA containing DNA from extinct types of humans, most of the genes in and on our bodies come from our microbiota.  

We've been debating and worrying about when A.I. might become truly intelligent, even self-aware, but the Cornell research is giving us something equally profound to debate: how to draw the line between "life" and "things"?

Medicine, healthcare, and health are going to have to develop more 21st century versions.  What we've been doing will look like brute force, human-centric approaches.  Synthetic biology and molecular engineering open up new and exciting possibilities, and some of those possibilities will upend the status quo in healthcare in ways we can barely even imagine now.  

It's not going to be enough to think of new approaches.  We're going to have to find new ways to even think about those new approaches.  
  
In the meantime, let's go watch some DASH dashes!