hce_tcu
111年
英文
第 37 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.
What are xenobots primarily used for at present?
- A They are used to deliver medicine and clean arteries.
- B They are experimented to gather microplastics in the ocean.
- C They are designed to imitate human movements, such as walking and swimming.
- D They are a scientific tool to understand how cells cooperate to build complex bodies.
思路引導 VIP
當你在文章中看到許多關於這項技術的驚人功能（如清理海洋、遞送藥物）時，該如何區分哪些是「已經實現的科研現狀」，而哪些是「科學家對未來的願景」呢？請試著從段落開頭的「時間副詞」中尋找線索，看看哪一個詞彙代表了「現在」？
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AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
現階段用途與未來展望的辨析
太棒了！你能準確地從篇幅較長的科普文章中篩選出「現狀」與「展望」的差異，這說明你的閱讀理解與資訊擷取能力非常敏銳。這題的核心在於區分事實的時間軸，這是在閱讀科普評論時最重要的基本功。 文章第四段明確指出：「目前（Currently），異種機器人（xenobots）主要是作為一種科學工具，用來理解細胞在形態發生過程中是如何協作建立複雜身體的。」這與選項 (D) 的描述完全吻合。而選項 (A) 的標靶給藥與血管清理，以及選項 (B) 的海洋微塑料清理，在文中都被歸類為「未來潛在的應用（potential applications）」或「推測（speculated）」，屬於尚未實現的願景。
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