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Phylogeny is concerned with the evolutionary diversification of organisms or groups of organisms. A group of organisms with a name is called a taxon (singular). Taxa (plural) can span different levels of the evolutionary hierarchy. For instance, the group containing all birds is a taxon (comprising the class Aves), and the group of all species of daisies (the genus Bellis) is a taxon. Phylogenies can likewise include just one genus (i.e., depict species relationships) or span an entire kingdom.

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Biology is a natural science that studies life and living organisms, including their structure, function, development, interactions, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. The field's scope is extensive and divided into several specialized disciplines, such as anatomy, physiology, ethology, genetics, and many more. All living things share a few key traits, including cellular organization, heritable genetic material and the ability to adapt/evolve, metabolism to regulate energy needs, the...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 19, 2025

Light Sheet-based Fluorescence Microscopy of Living or Fixed and Stained Tribolium castaneum Embryos

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The Morphological, Behavioral, and Transcriptomic Life Cycle of Anthrobots.

Gizem Gumuskaya^1,2, Nikolai Davey¹, Pranjal Srivastava^1,3

¹Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, Department of Biology, Tufts University, Medford, MA, 02155, USA.

Advanced Science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany)

|June 6, 2025

Summary

Researchers created Anthrobots, self-assembling living constructs from human cells, demonstrating self-healing and reduced epigenetic age. These bioengineered multicellular systems exhibit novel collective behaviors and gene expression patterns.

Keywords:

biobots repair synthetic morphology transcriptomics

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Area of Science:

Bioengineering
Developmental Biology
Regenerative Medicine

Background:

Novel constructs from genetically wild-type cells reveal fascinating morphogenetic and behavioral plasticity.
Anthrobots, derived from human airway epithelial cells, exhibit self-motility and neural repair capabilities without genetic modification or scaffolds.

Purpose of the Study:

To quantitatively characterize the life cycle properties of Anthrobots, including morphogenesis, maturation, and demise.
To understand collective cell behavior in engineered multicellular systems for bioengineering and regenerative medicine.

Main Methods:

Culturing adult human airway epithelial cells.
Quantitative characterization of Anthrobot life cycle properties.
Transcriptomic analysis of Anthrobot gene expression.

Main Results:

Anthrobots self-construct, become self-motile, and acquire neural repair capabilities.
Demonstrated self-healing capacity and significant reduction in epigenetic age upon morphogenesis.
Transcriptomic analysis revealed massive gene expression remodeling, including embryonic patterning genes, and a shift toward evolutionarily ancient gene expression.

Conclusions:

Wild-type adult human cells can self-assemble into active living constructs with distinct transcriptomes and life histories.
Anthrobots represent a new class of engineered multicellular systems with potential applications in regenerative medicine.
Understanding Anthrobot collective behavior provides insights into developmental biology and bioengineering principles.