Cells into Systems

This article focuses on different research efforts of Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems (EBICS) for creating biological machines. EBICS’s mission is to create a new scientific discipline for building living, multicellular machines that solve real-world problems in health, security, and the environment. The goal of building biological machines may be achieved through either of two distinct pathways— engineered systems and emergent systems—and the distinctions between them are important and fundamental. While a great deal of progress has been made developing the components for biological machines, one key challenge is the limited understanding of how cells interact with each other and with their environment. In order to create a biological machine, engineers will need to understand the language that cells of different types use to communicate with each other. Biological machines of the future will encompass the complexities of nature, the intricacies of which we are just beginning to comprehend.