Self-Replication from Random Parts

by Saul Griffith, Dan Goldwater, & Joseph M. Jacobson Nature, 29 Sep 2005 Autonomously self-replicating machines have long caught the imagination but have yet to acquire the sophistication of biological systems, which assemble structures from disordered building blocks. Here we describe the autonomous self-replication of a reconfigurable string of parts from randomly positioned input components. Such components, if suitably miniaturized and mass-produced, could constitute self-fabricating systems whose assembly is brought about by the parts themselves. Read more