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  • Science Illustrated

    COMPUTER CREATES ANEW LIFE FORM

    Nov 18, 2020 7 minutes
    By Mikkel Meister

    CREATION

    A computer simulates millions of years of evolution, producing a new and fine-tuned life form.

    AMILY TREE

    Biobots are neither robots nor biology, so are completely unique among life forms that have been created in the lab.

    LIFE

    In the future, such new creatures could help us with activities from microplastics removal to cancer treatment.

    A group of creatures measuring about 1mm in length speed around a culture dish. Some of these soft creatures seem to have arms and legs; others look more like oblong snail-like objects with neither arms nor legs. On closer inspection, however, they don’t much resemble snails either – or anything ever seen before. That’s because these tiny creations are not the products of nature’s standard processes of evolution. They were designed by a computer that skipped past Darwin, speeding through a digital evolution process to produce a complete formula for a new species of living robot, to be built from natural cells. Scientists have then produced the creatures according to the computer’s instructions.

    The result is a completely new life form that is neither a natural creature of flesh and blood, nor a robot controlled by microchips. It is something between – a

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