{"doi":"10.1002/advs.202409330","title":"The Morphological, Behavioral, and Transcriptomic Life Cycle of Anthrobots","abstract":"Fascinating aspects of morphogenetic and behavioral plasticity of living material are revealed by novel constructs that self-construct from genetically wild-type cells. Anthrobots arise from cultured adult human airway epithelial cells, developing, becoming self-motile, and acquiring neural repair capabilities without exogenous genetic circuits or inorganic scaffolds. Progress in bioengineering and regenerative medicine depends on developing a predictive understanding of collective cell behavior in novel circumstances. Toward that end, here a number of life cycle properties of Anthrobots, including their morphogenesis, maturation, and demise, are quantitatively characterized. A self-healing capacity and a remarkable reduction of epigenetic age upon morphogenesis are uncovered. Transcriptomic analysis reveals that assembling into Anthrobots drives a massive remodeling of gene expression relative to their cellular source, including several embryonic patterning genes, and a shift toward more evolutionarily ancient gene expression. These data reveal new aspects of engineered multicellular configurations, in which wild-type adult human cells self-assemble into an active living construct with its own distinct transcriptome, morphogenesis, and life history.","journal":"Advanced Science","year":2025,"id":544644,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9442,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1337535,"name":"Nikolai Davey","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1031908,"name":"Pranjal Srivastava","orcid":"0000-0003-0837-9003","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1337536,"name":"Andrew Bender","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1337162,"name":"Léo Pio‐Lopez","orcid":"0000-0001-8081-1070","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1230776,"name":"Douglas Hazel","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":321575,"name":"Michael Levin","orcid":"0000-0001-7292-8084","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1032616,"name":"Gizem Gumuskaya","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":136,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:53:12.864581Z","pmid":"40479594","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}