Experts from China's Nankai University College of Artificial Intelligence recently presented an AI-powered robot that could clone biological animals in an automated approach. This is the first-ever successful cloning research that gave birth to seven living and healthy piglets.
The piglets were created last March without assistance from controllers or any human intervention.
China's Hog Industry and Problem with Pork Production
China is one of the world's leading producers and consumers of pork. Today, approximately 400 million pigs are being nurtured in the country for hog businesses. The pork consumption per person reaches between 30 to 35 kilograms annually.
Pork meat is also the biggest protein that the population collectively consumes. But despite the blowing number of pork available in China, the market is still struggling to meet people's demands. In 2021, the country imported a whopping 3.31 million metric tonnes of pork.
Nankai University expert and leader of the pork-cloning research Liu Yaowei explained that the robotic model they constructed could significantly help the country increase the rates of pig production and cater to the demands of its meat. With the automated pig cloning approach, China might become independent and self-sufficient in the following years.
The piglets that the robot could produce are far from the concept of lab-grown meat. The clones in this new research are created from the cells of the original pig, while the conventional lab-grown proteins are made from cultured cells developed solely by scientists under certain conditions.
Automated AI Robot Pig Cloning
The advantage of piglet clones is that their cells could be cultured to create either a separate group of clones or even lab-grown meats. The clones could also be reproduced periodically without any help or control given by humans.
With that said, the risk of any errors in developing pigs is minimal compared to the most-utilized cloning technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT, which often damages and contaminates the delicate cells of a species.
On the other hand, agricultural science specialist Pen Dengke was harmed instead of failing to create piglet clones. The expert was able to process thousands of biological pigs through SCNT but was diagnosed with severe back pain issues later in life due to the intense concentration the approach requires.
Dengke believes that the new AI-powered robotic pig cloning method will likely revolutionize pig cloning.
Yaowei said that their artificial system programmed into the machine could get the data on the cell's strain and instruct the robot to perform the cloning process with minimal force and ultimately produce the piglets without any harm inflicted to the biomolecules or human-induced damages.
Interesting Engineering reports have yet to finalize the paper that details how the cloning model works.
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