Michael Levin
playerBiotech & Transhumanism · Defense & Military-Industrial
This scientist found that the body runs on electrical signals that can be reprogrammed like software.
Who they are
A developmental biologist at Tufts University who studies the body's own electrical fields[1].
What they do
In the engine's read, his work is the scientific foundation for treating living cells like programmable devices.
How it works
He showed that natural voltage patterns in tissue store body-shaping information beyond DNA, and that tweaking those electrical networks can override genetic instructions to reshape anatomy; the engine notes a DARPA program is building on his ideas to make cells remotely controllable.
Why it matters
It's the theory that could turn the human body into something that can be programmed from the outside.
The engine's record — word for word
Developmental biologist at Tufts. Pioneering work in bioelectricity: endogenous voltage potentials store non-genetic patterning information. Manipulating bioelectric networks can override genetic defaults to alter large-scale anatomy and cellular behavior. DARPAs GO program operationalizes his concepts — turning the human cell into a remotely programmable biological terminal. Theoretical grounding for the bio-digital convergence terminal capability.
Report #183 — the creatures, added to the bioelectricity record: XENOBOTS (Kriegman, Blackiston, Levin & Bongard, PNAS Jan 2020) — an evolutionary algorithm designs a body plan in silico, then embryonic Xenopus cells (epidermal progenitors PLUS cardiac progenitors for contractility) are sculpted to match it: design-then-build of an organism with no evolutionary ancestor. They self-locomote for days-weeks and 'automatically close lacerations'; the 2021 follow-up (PNAS, Dec 2021) documented KINEMATIC SELF-REPLICATION — assemblies that gather loose cells into working copies of themselves, 'previously unseen in any organism,' arising 'over days rather than evolving over millennia' (a pile-and-form behaviour, not heredity). ANTHROBOTS (Gumuskaya et al., Advanced Science, Nov 2023) — motile biobots that SELF-CONSTRUCT from ADULT HUMAN airway (bronchial) epithelial cells, each from a single cell over ~2 weeks, 30-500 μm, cilia-powered, capable of 'inducing rapid repair of scratches in cultured human neural cell sheets in vitro' — with a wild-type genome, 'without direct genetic editing or manual sculpting.' The load-bearing point for the engineered-beings thread: the two things everyone assumes are required — an embryo and gene editing — are absent. Caveats carried: transient Notch-mRNA microinjection in some xenobot tests; the 'anatomical compiler' remains a stated aspiration, no paper delivers one; nothing demonstrated in mammals beyond cell clusters.
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