---
title: "Scientists Create Material With “Artificial Metabolism”"
description: "A new biomaterial exhibits metabolism-like behaviors. It appears in some ways to act like a living thing, blurring the line between biology and machinery."
date: "2019-04-19"
modified: "2019-04-19"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-create-material-artificial-metabolism"
categories:
  - "Biology"
  - "Science & Energy"
tags:
  - "biology"
  - "biomaterial"
  - "robots"
  - "the digest"
---

# Scientists Create Material With “Artificial Metabolism”

![A new biomaterial exhibits metabolism-like behaviors. It appears in some ways to act like a living thing, blurring the line between biology and machinery.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/scientists-create-material-artificial-metabolism.png>)
*\<em\>Image: John Munson/Cornell University\</em\>*

## Slime Mold

Scientists just got one step closer to creating living machines — or at least machines that mimic biological life as we know it.

A new biomaterial built in a Cornell University bioengineering lab uses synthetic DNA to continuously and autonomously organize, assemble, and restructure itself in a process so similar to how biological cells and tissues grow that the researchers are calling "artificial metabolism," [according to research](<https://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/4/29/eaaw3512>) published in *Science Robotics* last week.

## We Can Regrow It

It's clear that the scientists are dancing around the idea of creating lifelike machinery. They stop short of straight-up claiming that their metabolizing biomaterial is alive, but the research begins by coyly listing the characteristics of life that the material exhibits — self-assembly, organization, and metabolism.

"We are introducing a brand-new, lifelike material concept powered by its very own artificial metabolism," Cornell engineer Dan Lui said in a [university-published press release](<https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/04/engineers-create-lifelike-material-artificial-metabolism>). "We are not making something that’s alive, but we are creating materials that are much more lifelike than have ever been seen before."

## Worming Along

The biomaterial mimic**s** a biological organism's endless metabolic cycle of taking in energy and replacing old cells. When placed in a nutrient-rich environment, the material grew in the direction of the raw materials and food it needed to thrive — not unlike how a developing brain's [neurons grow out](<https://futurism.com/scientists-may-have-reactivated-the-gene-that-causes-neurons-to-stop-growing>) in the direction of specific molecules.

Meanwhile, the material also let its tail end die off and decay, giving the appearance of a constantly-regrowing slime mold traveling around toward food.

While the little bio-blob isn't alive, it does appear to move and grow like a living thing, suggesting that scientists are blurring the line between life and machine more and more.

**READ MORE:** [FORGET ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE; THINK ARTIFICIAL LIFE](<https://hackaday.com/2019/04/19/forget-artificial-intelligence-think-artificial-life/>) \[*Hackaday*\]

**More on biomaterials:** *[Scientists Manipulated a Material for Robots That Grows Like Human Skin](<https://futurism.com/neoscope/material-robots-human-skin>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)