Engineers Create New Material that Behaves Like a Life-form

A group of scientists at Cornell University has created lifelike material powered by artificial metabolism. Make no mistake, we are speaking about machines, not living organisms, as one of the researchers, Prof. Dan Luo  from Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences explains it to the Cornell Chronicle: We are introducing a brand-new, lifelike material concept powered by its very own artificial metabolism. We are not making something that’s alive, but we are creating materials that are much more lifelike than have ever been seen before.
While DNA is a genetic material, it is also a polymer which can be transformed and adjusted. This is what the scientists did, using DNA-based Assembly and Synthesis of Hierarchical material to achieve a certain artificial DNA material with lifelike capabilities. In a paper published in Science Robotics earlier this month they give all the details of this giant leap for engineering. Lifelike machines, as their name suggests, have to mimic life, or the behavior of living organisms.