Schlagwort: Bioethics

Diskussionen, Projekte

A Living Tamagotchi

Jasmine Lu and Pedro Lopes of the University of Chicago published a paper in late 2022 describing the integration of an organism – the single-celled slime mold Physarum Polycephalum – into a wearable. From the abstract: „Researchers have been exploring how incorporating care-based interactions can change the user’s attitude & relationship towards an interactive device. This is typically achieved through virtual care where users care for digital entities. In this paper, we explore this concept further by investigating how physical care for a living organism, embedded as a functional component of an interactive device, also changes user-device relationships. Living organisms differ as they require an environment conducive to life, which in our concept, the user is responsible for providing by caring for the organism (e.g., feeding it). We instantiated our concept by engineering a smartwatch that includes a slime mold that physically conducts power to a heart rate sensor inside the device, acting as a living wire. In this smartwatch, the availability of heart-rate sensing depends on the health of the slime mold – with the user’s care, the slime mold becomes conductive and enables the sensor; conversely, without care, the slime mold dries and disables the sensor (resuming care resuscitates the slime mold).“ (Lu and Lopes 2022) The paper „Integrating Living Organisms in Devices to Implement Care-based Interactions“ can be downloaded here.

Fig.: A normal Tamagotchi

Projekte, Publikationen

The Xenobots in our Bodies

In a paper published on 13 January 2020, researchers from the University of Vermont and Tufts University discuss computer-designed, novel organisms called Xenobots. Xenobots consist of skin and muscle cells. The skin cells stabilize the organisms, the muscle cells enable them to perform different activities. A nervous system is not present. An AI system calculates the optimal structure and ratio of the cells in relation to a specific function. The Xenobots are assembled according to the resulting construction plan. In fact, the cells appear to work together. They receive their energy from their embryonic resources – for this one must know that they were developed from stem cells from frog embryos. The researchers see different areas of application. One could build Xenobots that clean blood vessels, for example by removing plaque. However, this could also lead to dangers, because it will be easy to insert the biorobots into the bloodstream, but not so easy to remove them. However, there will also be ways to break down the cells.

Fig.: Injection of biorobots