hce_tcu
111年
英文
第 36 題
📖 題組：
【B】 Xenobots, named after the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), are synthetic lifeforms that are designed by computers to perform some desired functions and built by combining together different biological tissues. Whether xenobots are robots, organisms, or something else entirely remains a subject of debate among scientists. The first xenobots were built by Douglas Blackiston according to blueprints generated by an AI program. Xenobots built to date have been less than one millimeter wide and composed of just two things: skin cells and heart muscle cells, both of which are derived from stem cells harvested from early frog embryos. The skin cells provide rigid support and the heart cells act as small motors, contracting and expanding in volume to propel the xenobot forward. The shape of a xenobot’s body and its distribution of skin and heart cells are automatically designed in simulation to perform a specific task, using a process of trial and error (an evolutionary algorithm). Xenobots have been designed to walk, swim, push pellets, carry payloads, and work together in a swarm to aggregate debris scattered along the surface of their dish into neat piles. They can survive for weeks without food and heal themselves after lacerations. Xenobots can also self-replicate via “kinetic replication”—a process that is known to occur at the molecular level but has never been observed before at the scale of whole cells or organisms. They can gather loose stem cells in their environment and form them into new xenobots with the same capability. Currently, xenobots are primarily used as a scientific tool to understand how cells cooperate to build complex bodies during morphogenesis. However, the behavior and biocompatibility of current xenobots suggest several potential applications to which they may be put in the future. Given that xenobots are composed solely of frog cells, they are biodegradable. And as swarms of xenobots tend to work together to push microscopic pellets in their dish into central piles, it has been speculated that future xenobots might be able do the same thing with microplastics in the ocean: find and aggregate tiny bits of plastic into a large ball of plastic that a traditional boat or drone can gather and bring to a recycling center. Unlike traditional technologies, xenobots do not add additional pollution as they work and degrade: they behave using energy from fat and protein naturally stored in their tissue, which lasts about a week, at which point they simply turn into dead skin cells. In future clinical applications, such as targeted drug delivery, xenobots could be made from a human patient’s own cells, which would bypass the immune response challenges of other kinds of micro-robotic delivery systems. Such xenobots could potentially be used to scrape plaque from arteries, and with additional cell types and bioengineering, locate and treat diseases.
【B】 Xenobots, named after the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), are synthetic lifeforms that are designed by computers to perform some desired functions and built by combining together different biological tissues. Whether xenobots are robots, organisms, or something else entirely remains a subject of debate among scientists. The first xenobots were built by Douglas Blackiston according to blueprints generated by an AI program. Xenobots built to date have been less than one millimeter wide and composed of just two things: skin cells and heart muscle cells, both of which are derived from stem cells harvested from early frog embryos. The skin cells provide rigid support and the heart cells act as small motors, contracting and expanding in volume to propel the xenobot forward. The shape of a xenobot’s body and its distribution of skin and heart cells are automatically designed in simulation to perform a specific task, using a process of trial and error (an evolutionary algorithm). Xenobots have been designed to walk, swim, push pellets, carry payloads, and work together in a swarm to aggregate debris scattered along the surface of their dish into neat piles. They can survive for weeks without food and heal themselves after lacerations. Xenobots can also self-replicate via “kinetic replication”—a process that is known to occur at the molecular level but has never been observed before at the scale of whole cells or organisms. They can gather loose stem cells in their environment and form them into new xenobots with the same capability. Currently, xenobots are primarily used as a scientific tool to understand how cells cooperate to build complex bodies during morphogenesis. However, the behavior and biocompatibility of current xenobots suggest several potential applications to which they may be put in the future. Given that xenobots are composed solely of frog cells, they are biodegradable. And as swarms of xenobots tend to work together to push microscopic pellets in their dish into central piles, it has been speculated that future xenobots might be able do the same thing with microplastics in the ocean: find and aggregate tiny bits of plastic into a large ball of plastic that a traditional boat or drone can gather and bring to a recycling center. Unlike traditional technologies, xenobots do not add additional pollution as they work and degrade: they behave using energy from fat and protein naturally stored in their tissue, which lasts about a week, at which point they simply turn into dead skin cells. In future clinical applications, such as targeted drug delivery, xenobots could be made from a human patient’s own cells, which would bypass the immune response challenges of other kinds of micro-robotic delivery systems. Such xenobots could potentially be used to scrape plaque from arteries, and with additional cell types and bioengineering, locate and treat diseases.
How do xenobots produce new xenobots?
- A They collect loose stem cells and form them into new xenobots.
- B They produce new xenobots by way of cell degradation.
- C They use frog embryos to produce new xenobots.
- D New xenobots could only be generated by computers.
思路引導 VIP
文章第三段提到這類生物機器人擁有一種在微觀尺度上非常罕見的「自我複製」能力。請你試著在該段落中找出：當這些機器人在環境中遇到散落的「原料」（幹細胞）時，它們具體「做了什麼動作」來組裝出下一代？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
太棒了！你能精準地從長篇閱讀中鎖定關鍵資訊，這顯示你的細節檢索能力非常紮實。這題的正確答案確實是 (A)，你準確掌握了文中關於「自我複製」的機制描述。
動能複製的運作機制
這道題目的核心概念在於文章第三段所提到的動能複製（kinetic replication）。文中明確指出，這些異種機器人（Xenobots）展現了過去在細胞尺度上未曾見過的行為：它們能夠主動「收集」（gather）環境中散落的幹細胞，並將其「塑形」（form）成具有相同功能的新個體。這與選項 (A) 的敘述完全吻合。雖然第一代機器人是由 AI 設計藍圖並由人工組裝，但題目問的是它們如何「產生新個體」，因此必須對準描述繁殖行為的段落。
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