[DIYbio] Re: What are the most promising techniques being researched for bio-bots?

When you mention bio-bots, in my non expert opinion, they are mechanically stitched clump of cells functioning on a principle of cellular motors, having some rigid structure to flex off.

They can't be used outside the lab. They can't be used outside the liquid media. This will be useless unless as cells used can be harvested and cultured on a more immunologically and pH, salt, CO2/O2-buffering cell and media independent environment. 

The bio bot still needs an electric input to function just like most other bots.

The bio bot needs to have a 3D printed scaffold.

The bio bot needs to feed.

The bio bot needs to respire (there is now an exception to this rule in animals).

Bio bot must itself be layered to do the desired/designed range of motions.

Even to produce a jellyfish like bio bot, heart and muscle cells are used to populate the extracellular matrix.

Mammal cells are used often as they are best characterized. The media is expensive. 

They could be cultivated to produce humane meat.

This (bio bot) was done to show that it can be done. People publish on these curious fabrications to show they are not sitting on their hands in a university. 

I spoke to an engineer over a concept of planetary proportions once. He said "just because it can be done doesn't mean society will waste its resources to do it." Bio bot is a multidisciplinary cumbersome toy (for now). If you can send it to the organism from which it was sourced, for delivery, even then you might be faced with problems. If someone you know plans to release it to the environment, I have a bridge to sell them. 

Now if the thing was assembled from a clump of rotifer or other next to microscopic animal cells, I wouldn't know what to tell you. Those things are pond scum. They evolved to take on environmental beating.

On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 8:39:14 PM UTC-4, Haley Sales wrote:

I know absolutely nothing at all about bio-bots, crispr-cas9 or biohacking. I don't intend to build bio-bots myself.

I just want to know where the research is at so that I can be aware.

I work with blockchain technology and my research is focused on a "trust protocol" that can influence physical infrastructure. This could impact how we manage physical labs & elect/sort expert opinions on research topics.

But what I'm most interested in is propagating the "watcher infrastructure" of this protocol as efficiently as possible. I imagine that bio-bots would be less expensive than regular robots once we've perfected this research.

Feel free to be as scientific as you want. There will be a lot of terms I don't know, but at least now I can be aware of them, so that when I do research later I can figure out how far along we are.