#reproduction

#reproduction

Pac-Man Shaped Xenobots are Lab-Made Living Robots that Can Replicate ThemselvesXenobots are these interesting entities created by scientists just a couple of years ago. Made out of stem cells from frogs and built according to AI-created blueprints, these can knit themselves into small spheres and move around lab dishes. But scientists found something even more interesting about xenobots a few months ago. As it turns out, they can self-replicate, and they do so by moving.Xenobots, according to study co-author Douglas Blackiston, find loose, "sort of like robotic parts" in their environment, and they cobble them together. The result from these cobbled parts is a new generation of xenobots. Blackiston and the other researchers called this reproduction method by movement "kinematic self-replication."Generally, the spheroid xenobots can only create one generation before they die out. Scientists, however, helped the xenobots spawn to up to four generations through the use of an AI program that predicted the optimal shape a progenitor xenobot should have — a C-shape (or a hungry Pac-Man).Kirstin Petersen, an engineer who studies groups of robots, describes this as an "incredibly exciting breakthrough." He points out the possible use of xenobots in biomedicine and therapeutics.(Image Credit: Douglas Blackiston and Sam Kriegman)#Xenobots #Robotics #Engineering #Reproduction #Engineering #PacMan #Biomedicine #AI

Female Salamanders Upend What We Know About ReproductionA line of salamanders of the Ambystoma genus are all female. They produce all female offspring, and have been doing that for millions of years. Yet their offspring are not clones, even if their mitochondrial DNA is always the same. These salamanders mate with males from other species of the same genus, and incorporate their genetic material into the next generation of females. The scientists who studied this phenomenon call it “kleptogenesis” as it involves stealing genetic material from a different species. The unisex Ambystoma are weirder by far than other animals that are made up of only females. In some other female-only species, the females mate with related species because sperm kickstarts the process, then they reject all the males' DNA. In this salamander, the mother picks and chooses which parts of the male's genome will be incorporated into her female offspring. If she has mated with three males, she can incorporate the genes of one, or two, or three of them into her offspring, plus her own, or possibly delete her own, or use any combination of the reproductive DNA she has available. While this hybridization keeps the gene pool fresh, it does not change their reproductive behavior, not does it ever introduce males into the line. If this sounds complicated, it is. The research paper, with its biology jargon, is even more confusing, but you can read a relatively simple description of just how weird these unisexual salamanders are when it comes to their designer babies at Popular Science. -via Metafilter #salamander #reproduction #DNA #gene #kleptogenesis