Synthetic morphology via active and agential matter
Jamie A. Davies, Michael Levin
Abstract
Bioengineering can address many critical needs, from transformative biomedicine toenvironmental remediation. Beyond its practical uses, constructing novel living systemswill enhance our understanding of biology and nurture emerging intersections betweenbiological and computational sciences. Here, we briefly review the state of the art as itprogresses from cell-level synthetic biology to multicellular synthetic morphology.Importantly, we highlight recent experimental embryology results that push beyond thefamiliar, default outcomes of embryogenesis to reveal the plasticity, interoperability, andproblem-solving capacities of life. From these, we argue for moving on from traditionalbottom-up engineering from simple components (genes, proteins), to include designstrategies that explicitly work with cells as agential beings, with their own goals, agendas,and powers of problem-solving. Strong impacts in developmental biology andapplications such as regenerative medicine and robotics are expected, as fields ofengineering develop emerging frameworks for expanding from passive materials toinclude active, computational, and agential matter.