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Is DNA Hardware or Software?

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A conversation with Michael Levin about Xenobots, the world’s first living robots.

I n mid-January, a group of computer scientists and biologists from the University of Vermont, Tufts, and Harvard announced that they had created an entirely new life form — xenobots, the world’s first living robots. They had harvested skin and cardiac cells from frog embryos, designed and sculpted them to perform particular tasks with the help of an evolutionary algorithm, and then set them free to play. The result— it’s alive! — was a programmable organism. Named after the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis , from which they were harvested, these teams of cells were wholly liberated f

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