title: Embryonics: a path to artificial life?
abstract: Electronic systems, no matter how clever and intelligent they are, cannot yet demonstrate the reliability that biological systems can. Perhaps we can learn from these processes, which have developed through millions of years of evolution, in our pursuit of highly reliable systems. This article discusses how such systems, inspired by biological principles, might be built using simple embryonic cells. We illustrate how they can monitor their own functional integrity in order to protect themselves from internal failure or from hostile environmental effects and how faults caused by DNA mutation or cell death can be repaired and thus full system functionality restored.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of the West of England, Bristol, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QY, United Kingdom. Xuegong.Zhang@uwe.ac.uk
authors.forename: Xuegong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Dragffy
authors.forename: Anthony G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Pipe
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016923:Cell Death; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D002455:Cell Division; D004260:DNA Repair; D004581:Electronics; D004626:Embryology; D047108:Embryonic Development; D008954:Models, Biological