Mar 30, 2021 01:08 AM
(This post was last modified: Mar 30, 2021 11:02 PM by C C.)
Scientists built an artificial cell that grows & divides like a natural one
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-...s-normally
EXCERPTS: In a new first for genetic engineering, scientists have developed a single-celled synthetic organism that grows and divides much like a normal cell, mimicking aspects of the cell division cycle that underlies and generates healthy living cellular life. The achievement, demonstrated in an engineered unicellular bacteria-like life form called JCVI-syn3A, is the result of decades of genomic sequencing and analysis by scientists, exploring the roles individual genes play inside living creatures.
[...] Despite the several years of work behind the achievement, there's still a huge amount of mystery wrapped up in these genes. For example, while JCVI-syn3A features 19 new genes, only 7 genes are thought to play a role in making its cell division processes run in a more regular fashion. And of those seven, only two genes – called ftsZ and sepF – have had their functions identified.
Quite how the other five necessarily contribute to JCVI-syn3A's morphological consistency remains unknown, but one thing is certain: this tiny genome now represents the new standard for experimentation that could help us characterize just what these genes do inside organisms.
"JCVI-syn3A thus offers a compelling minimal model for bacterial physiology and platform for engineering biology broadly," the researchers explain in their paper. Or, to put it another way, as the leader of NIST's Cellular Engineering Group, Elizabeth Strychalski, says: "We want to understand the fundamental design rules of life. If this cell can help us to discover and understand those rules, then we're off to the races." (MORE - details)
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ECHi82BK_Rc
Boston Dynamics’ new robot doesn’t dance. It has a warehouse job.
https://www.wired.com/story/boston-dynam...house-job/
EXCERPTS: It can’t do back flips like Atlas the humanoid robot, nor can it dance or open doors for its friends, like Spot the robotic dog can. Instead, Boston Dynamics’ new robot, named Stretch, is going straight to work in a warehouse. Rolling around on a wheeled base, it’s basically a large robotic arm that grabs boxes using vacuum power, and it’s designed for tasks like unloading trucks or stacking pallets.
If Spot and Atlas are the show-offs in the family, Stretch is the straight-up workhorse. But while these machines all look and move in wildly different ways, they actually share a lot of DNA. Stretch may seem familiar to you, because it’s a sort of descendant of another machine that debuted a few years back: Handle. That robot had a similar suction arm, but it balanced on two wheels, like a Segway scooter. Handle would grab a box, scoot backward, turn 90 degrees, and roll away to stack the box somewhere else.
It looked neat on video, but in practice the robot needed a lot of room to operate. It could manage unloading boxes from a truck, sure. “But it took a long time,” says Kevin Blankespoor, lead of warehouse robotics at Boston Dynamics. “The truck is a pretty confined space. And so for Handle, every time it grabbed the box, it would need to roll back into some space where it could rotate freely without collisions.”
Which is all to say: If Handle were a human, it’d be let go. So Boston Dynamics pivoted (sorry) to a new form factor for Stretch that slapped a similar robotic vacuum arm on a base with four wheels. Each wheel can move independently, so the robot can shift side to side or forward and backward to orient itself in, say, the back of a truck.
[...] Boston Dynamics' engineers imagine that Stretch, which will be available next year, will complement human warehouse labor, not replace it. The machine is semiautonomous: A warehouse manager would give it a specific task and the robot would take care of the heavy lifting. “You can think of it like a sophisticated power tool to help warehouse operators get their job done,” says Blankespoor.
“The good news is that automating the back-breaking task of lifting boxes might indeed improve worker safety, and Stretch is unlikely to replace humans entirely,” says MIT Media Lab robotics ethicist Kate Darling. “At the same time, I would like to see companies thinking more creatively about how technology can support their workers rather than automate them away.” (MORE - details) ...... BD's own video: https://youtu.be/yYUuWWnfRsk
(AP) Boston Dynamics unveils Stretch, a warehouse robot
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/RFNrPXSGRIM
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-...s-normally
EXCERPTS: In a new first for genetic engineering, scientists have developed a single-celled synthetic organism that grows and divides much like a normal cell, mimicking aspects of the cell division cycle that underlies and generates healthy living cellular life. The achievement, demonstrated in an engineered unicellular bacteria-like life form called JCVI-syn3A, is the result of decades of genomic sequencing and analysis by scientists, exploring the roles individual genes play inside living creatures.
[...] Despite the several years of work behind the achievement, there's still a huge amount of mystery wrapped up in these genes. For example, while JCVI-syn3A features 19 new genes, only 7 genes are thought to play a role in making its cell division processes run in a more regular fashion. And of those seven, only two genes – called ftsZ and sepF – have had their functions identified.
Quite how the other five necessarily contribute to JCVI-syn3A's morphological consistency remains unknown, but one thing is certain: this tiny genome now represents the new standard for experimentation that could help us characterize just what these genes do inside organisms.
"JCVI-syn3A thus offers a compelling minimal model for bacterial physiology and platform for engineering biology broadly," the researchers explain in their paper. Or, to put it another way, as the leader of NIST's Cellular Engineering Group, Elizabeth Strychalski, says: "We want to understand the fundamental design rules of life. If this cell can help us to discover and understand those rules, then we're off to the races." (MORE - details)
Boston Dynamics’ new robot doesn’t dance. It has a warehouse job.
https://www.wired.com/story/boston-dynam...house-job/
EXCERPTS: It can’t do back flips like Atlas the humanoid robot, nor can it dance or open doors for its friends, like Spot the robotic dog can. Instead, Boston Dynamics’ new robot, named Stretch, is going straight to work in a warehouse. Rolling around on a wheeled base, it’s basically a large robotic arm that grabs boxes using vacuum power, and it’s designed for tasks like unloading trucks or stacking pallets.
If Spot and Atlas are the show-offs in the family, Stretch is the straight-up workhorse. But while these machines all look and move in wildly different ways, they actually share a lot of DNA. Stretch may seem familiar to you, because it’s a sort of descendant of another machine that debuted a few years back: Handle. That robot had a similar suction arm, but it balanced on two wheels, like a Segway scooter. Handle would grab a box, scoot backward, turn 90 degrees, and roll away to stack the box somewhere else.
It looked neat on video, but in practice the robot needed a lot of room to operate. It could manage unloading boxes from a truck, sure. “But it took a long time,” says Kevin Blankespoor, lead of warehouse robotics at Boston Dynamics. “The truck is a pretty confined space. And so for Handle, every time it grabbed the box, it would need to roll back into some space where it could rotate freely without collisions.”
Which is all to say: If Handle were a human, it’d be let go. So Boston Dynamics pivoted (sorry) to a new form factor for Stretch that slapped a similar robotic vacuum arm on a base with four wheels. Each wheel can move independently, so the robot can shift side to side or forward and backward to orient itself in, say, the back of a truck.
[...] Boston Dynamics' engineers imagine that Stretch, which will be available next year, will complement human warehouse labor, not replace it. The machine is semiautonomous: A warehouse manager would give it a specific task and the robot would take care of the heavy lifting. “You can think of it like a sophisticated power tool to help warehouse operators get their job done,” says Blankespoor.
“The good news is that automating the back-breaking task of lifting boxes might indeed improve worker safety, and Stretch is unlikely to replace humans entirely,” says MIT Media Lab robotics ethicist Kate Darling. “At the same time, I would like to see companies thinking more creatively about how technology can support their workers rather than automate them away.” (MORE - details) ...... BD's own video: https://youtu.be/yYUuWWnfRsk
(AP) Boston Dynamics unveils Stretch, a warehouse robot