Medical Engineering Distinguished Seminar Series, Prof. Michael Levin

https://caltech.zoom.us/j/89643873789

A defining feature of developmental, regenerative, and cancer-suppressing morphogenesis is the ability of cells to work together toward specific anatomical outcomes. How do cells coordinate their activities to ensure appropriate target morphologies, in normal and perturbed scenarios? A key part of the answer is endogenous bioelectricity. Evolution discovered bioelectric networks very early – around the time of bacterial biofilms; it exploits this powerful biophysical modality for the same reasons in the body as in the brain – as a mechanism to scale up the cognitive light cone of individual cells, and to store and process information needed to navigate a problem space (in this case, anatomical morphospace). In this talk, I will describe our work on endogenous bioelectric patterns as setpoints for anatomical homeostasis. We developed the first molecular tools to read and write non-neural bioelectric states, beginning the roadmap toward decoding the bioelectric code. Current applications include the repair of birth defects, induction of organogenesis and regenerative response, and the detection and normalization of cancer. On-going work includes the role of bioelectrics in aging, synthetic bioengineering, and non-neuromorphic machine learning frameworks. In addition to these practical outcomes, bioelectricity is an interface that highlights deep symmetries between developmental biology and neuroscience and sheds light on problems in evolutionary developmental biology.

Biography: Michael Levin's background is in computer science and biology, and his group works at the intersection of developmental biophysics, computer science, and cognitive science. He is primarily interested in how intelligence self-organizes in a diverse range of natural, engineered, and hybrid embodiments. Levin has been developing a framework for recognizing and communicating with unconventional cognitive systems; applied to the collective intelligence of cell groups undergoing morphogenesis, these ideas have allowed the Levin lab to develop new applications in birth defects, organ regeneration, and cancer suppression. His lab also produces synthetic life forms, such as Xenobots and Anthrobots, as exploration platforms for patterns of form and behavior in space of possibilities that in-forms systems from simple algorithms to complex animal life. https://as.tufts.edu/biology/people/faculty/michael-levin