For Real: Frog Skin Cells Turned Themselves Into Living Machines After Scientists Removed Them From Embryos

Using blobs of skin cells from frog embryos, scientists have grown creatures unlike anything else on Earth, a new study reports. These microscopic “living machines” can swim, sweep up debris and heal themselves after a gash.

Scientists often strive to understand the world as it exists, says Jacob Foster, a collective intelligence researcher at UCLA not involved with this research. But the new study, published March 31 in Science Robotics, is part of a “liberating moment in the history of science,” Foster says. “A reorientation towards what is possible.”

In a way, the bots were self-made. Scientists removed small clumps of skin stem cells from frog embryos, to see what these cells would do on their own. Separated from their usual spots in a growing frog embryo, the cells organized themselves into balls and grew. About three days later, the clusters, called xenobots, began to swim.

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