Bioelectric Networks: An Interface to Engineering with the Agential Material of Life

This is a ~1 hour talk (given at the Departmental Seminar series at the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences) on the use of a cognitive approach to bioengineering and regenerative medicine, in which morphogenesis is the behavior (in anatomical space) of a collective intelligence of cellular swarms. I describe our work that takes advantage of the bioelectric interface to re-specify the targets of morphogenesis. CHAPTERS:(00:00) Agential Material for Bioengineering(02:00) The Anatomical Compiler Goal(04:00) Biology as Agential Material(06:00) Intelligence Below Cell Level(09:00) Anatomy Not Just DNA(12:00) Hardware vs Software Biology(14:00) Cellular Collective Intelligence Examples(18:00) Creative Problem-Solving in Cells(22:00) Cognitive Glue and Goal-Seeking(25:00) Bioelectricity: Ancient Communication(28:00) Reading and Writing Patterns(30:00) Rewriting Collective Cell Memory(33:00) Regenerating Limbs in Frogs(35:00) Planaria Pattern Memory(39:00) Plasticity Beyond Species(41:00) Novel Shapes and Galls(44:00) Computational Models for Repair(49:00) Cancer as Goal Failure(50:00) Bioelectric Cancer Suppression(53:00) Novel Anatomical Goals: Xenobots(01:00:00) Human Anthrobots from Cells(01:02:00) Autonomous Personalized Therapeutics(01:04:00) Top-Down Biomedical Approaches(01:06:00) Biorobotics and Bioprompting(01:07:00) Ethics of Diverse Beings CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab