This article was written by Anastasia Kutselik of Richard Montgomery High School
Xenobots are synthetic lifeforms that were first designed in 2020 by scientists in Harvard University, University of Vermont and Tufts University. They can be “programmed” to create any living thing. To create them, scientists used the cells of African clawed frogs and rearranged them. The xenobots move with limbs called cilia, which allow them to stick to other cells or to each other, as well as form various “shapes.” Because of these properties, scientists believe xenobots could be a solution to medical illnesses. Still, they are relatively new, with many questions about them.
According CNN, scientists learned in 2020 that xenobots use kinetic reproduction, which has not been studied before as no other known organism uses it. But after observing the process, they found out that it happens at a molecular level and only in specific circumstances. Along with this, scientists found that xenobots can be programmed into specific shapes, and how these shapes affect every aspect of them, even as far as reproduction.
According to Harvard, the xenobots reproduce at fast rates, similar to COVID. Since the speed of reproduction is similar to diseases and xenobots can be “programmed,” scientists want to use them to fight and prevent diseases. They talk about how this creation can also lead to regenerative medicine for trauma, birth defects, cancer and even aging. Xenobots can easily fix themselves if sliced or broken and after a certain time period they die off without harming other cells. This mean that they would not be harmful to patients. In order to use xenobots as medicine, scientists still need time to experiment on how to control them and how they function, as this is all relatively new.
Besides medical purposes, scientists are also planning to use them for plastic waste, which is a major global issue. Large pieces that are not broken down yet can be filtered out, but microplastics are what cause the most issues. Since trash cannot dissolve in water, it leaves small particles which are then consumed by animals, afterwards killing them. According to The Oxygen Project, xenobots can be used to cluster these microscopic pieces together and form a larger piece of trash that can be filtered out. However, this is a new idea, so there is not much planned so far.
Being relatively new, xenobots have raised many questions, one being whether it is ethical to make and reproduce them. In an NPR article, Duke University professor of law and philosophy Nita Farahany raises this question. Reproducing the xenobots relies on parts of the frog cells, similar to humans reproducing from parts of other humans—which is not ethical. There have been concerns that xenobots’ self-replication could cause safety issues, but scientists have addressed this by saying that the cells can be easily extinguished. All experiments with xenobots have all been under strict regulation of ethical experts. But to continue addressing the concerns the scientists who created them still need to uncover a lot of unknown information about xenobots.
In conclusion, xenobots could be the start of something new in medicine and waste management. But being relatively new, scientists need more time to research the capabilities of xenobots.
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