artificial animal

How small a canvas can evolution work on? Scientists have experimented with a synthetic lifeform designed to have the simplest possible genome, and found that given the chance it can evolve lost fitness back, showing that indeed, “life finds a way.”

The line between robots and living organisms is beginning to blur. Researchers at the University of Vermont and Tufts University have now essentially created new creatures from frog cells, complete with programmable behaviors.

Researchers claim to have created the first stable, replicating semisynthetic organism to contain an extra pair of artificial bases in its genetic code that are able to be passed from one generation to the next