Another cool thing about Michael Levins work as i read more about it:
the genome gives you a hardware toolkit, but it doesn’t specify the final form. Morphogenesis—what form cells take, what behavior they express—is influenced by higher-order control systems like bioelectric circuits.
They went even as far as to create “xenobots” using this theory:
They created them by:
1. Taking frog skin and cardiac cells
2. Using a computer to design body plans for novel “organisms”
3. Sculpting these cells into new shapes—and then letting them self-organize
These living machines:
- Move autonomously
- Exhibit emergent behaviors (like swarm dynamics or self-healing)
- Can perform basic tasks like cargo transport
- Do things their cells were never “meant” to do, according to traditional developmental biology
So “biohacking” new organisms will be more like coaxing out new behaviours and forms by reprogramming these bioelectric networks (morphogenetic software) without actually needing to hack the hardware schematic (genome).
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