Biomechanical engineering

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Bioelectricity and wp:Morphogenesis

"DNA isn't the only builder in the biological world -- there's also a mysterious bioelectric layer directing cells to work together to grow organs, systems and bodies, says biologist Michael Levin. Sharing unforgettable and groundbreaking footage of two-headed worms, he introduces us to xenobots -- the world's first living robots, created in his lab by cracking the electrical code of cells -- and discusses what this discovery may mean for the future of medicine, the environment and even life itself."

Michael Levin | Cell Intelligence in Physiological & Morphological Spaces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLiHLDrOTW8

Michael Levin

wm:Michael Levin Works on ..."novel ways to understand and control complex pattern formation. We use techniques of molecular genetics, biophysics, and computational modeling to address large-scale control of growth and form. We work in whole frogs and flatworms, and sometimes zebrafish and human tissues in culture. Our projects span regeneration, embryogenesis, cancer, and learning plasticity - all examples of how cellular networks process information. In all of these efforts, our goal is not only to understand the molecular mechanisms necessary for morphogenesis, but also to uncover and exploit the cooperative signaling dynamics that enable complex bodies to build and remodel themselves toward a correct structure. Our major goal is to understand how individual cell behaviors are orchestrated towards appropriate large-scale outcomes despite unpredictable environmental perturbations."

"A key question for basic biology and regenerative medicine concerns the way in which evolution exploits physics toward adaptive form and function. While genomes specify the molecular hardware of cells, what algorithms enable cellular collectives to reliably build specific, complex, target morphologies? Our lab studies the way in which all cells, not just neurons, communicate as electrical networks that enable scaling of single-cell properties into collective intelligences that solve problems in anatomical feature space. By learning to read, interpret, and write bioelectrical information in vivo, we have identified some novel controls of growth and form that enable incredible plasticity and robustness in anatomical homeostasis. In this talk, I will describe the fundamental knowledge gaps with respect to anatomical plasticity and pattern control beyond emergence, and discuss our efforts to understand large-scale morphological control circuits. I will show examples in embryogenesis, regeneration, cancer, and synthetic living machines. I will also discuss the implications of this work for not only regenerative medicine, but also for fundamental understanding of the origin of bodyplans and the relationship between genomes and functional anatomy."

Allen Discovery Center "The Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University focuses on reading, interpreting, and writing the Morphogenetic Code – an instructive layer of biophysical computations, that lies between the genomically-specified protein hardware of cells and the complex anatomy; it orchestrates and enables cells to communicate to create and repair the structure and function of bodies. Our interdisciplinary efforts explore the roles that bioelectrical signaling plays in pattern memory and decision-making by somatic cell networks. By understanding the native principles guiding anatomical decision-making by cellular collectives, the team is creating powerful new quantitative theories of top-down pattern control along with protocols and instrumentation that show how living organ structure can be rationally modified. Addressing fundamental questions at the intersection of embryogenesis, computation, evolution, and synthetic morphology, this work explores a key frontier within the dark matter of biology: how information processing in cell groups implements robust control of large-scale functional anatomy."