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The world’s first living robots — known as “xenobots” — can now reproduce, US scientists have revealed. Details about the robots, created using the heart and skin stem cells from the African clawed frog, were unveiled last year after experiments showed they could move and self-heal. Now, the scientists at Tufts University, the University of Vermont and Harvard who made the xenobots say the tiny blobs can also self-replicate. The results of the new research were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.
美国科学家透露，全球首个活体机器人现已实现繁殖，被称为“爪蟾机器人”。该机器人由非洲爪蟾的心肌细胞和皮肤细胞造成，在实验表明它们可以移动和自我修复后，它们于去年亮相。现在塔夫茨大学、佛蒙特大学和哈佛大学的科学家们创造了这种爪蟾机器人，并且表明这种“小肉团”也可以自我复制。这项新研究的结果发表在周一的《美国国家科学院院刊》上。
Experiments showed that the organisms can swim out into their dish, find other single cells and assemble “baby” xenobots. A few days later, the babies become new xenobots that look and move just like the initial creation. The new xenobots can then go out and self-replicate again, according to the scientists. Xenobots, which are less than a millimeter wide, are designed on a computer and hand-assembled. The scientists said they were stunned to learn the tiny blobs could spontaneously replicate.
实验表明，这些生物体可以在其培养皿中分离，与其他单细胞一起生成“爪蟾机器人幼体”。几天后，这些幼体变成了新的爪蟾机器人，它们的外观和动作都和最初的母体一样。科学家们表示，新的爪蟾机器人可以再次寻找细胞，不断自我复制。爪蟾机器人，不到一毫米宽，由电脑设计，人工组合。科学家们表示很惊讶，他们发现这些“小肉团”能够自我复制。
“People have thought for quite a long time that we’ve worked out all the ways that life can reproduce or replicate. But this is something that’s never been observed before,” said Douglas Blackiston, who worked on the study.
参与这项研究的道格拉斯·布莱克斯顿表示，“很长一段时间以来，人们一直以为我们已经发现了生命繁殖或复制的所有方式。但这种方式是以前从未观察到的。”
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