Contribution information

Title	How chemical engineers contribute to artificial life research
Status	Accepted
Final type	Lecture
Final session	Reaction engineering and catalysis
Authors	J., Čejková1 1 University of Chemistry and Technology Prague, Prague 6, Czechia
Uploaded abstract	link
Uploaded full paper	link
Brief content	Artificial life is the study of artificial systems that exhibit behaviour characteristic of natural living systems. This work introduces the artificial life field with the emphasis on wet artificial life, which aims to synthetize artificial cells from chemical precursors. We have found that similarly as living cells, some organic droplets are able to perform chemotactic movements in concentration gradients of chemoattractants, change their shape or behave collectively. Recently we proposed to call such droplets with life-like behaviour as “liquid robots”. The relation of liquid robots to the origin of word “robot” will be discussed as well. Because the artificial life is very interdisciplinary, it will be shown how chemical engineers can contribute to solving of open problems in in this field.
ID	84