NTNU Morphogenetic Engineering
- NTNU Analysis, Design and Control of Microbial Systems
- NTNU Aquaculture Biotechnology
- NTNU Bioreactor Design and Operation
- NTNU Biopolymer Engineering
- NTNU Genome Editing
- NTNU Human Physiome
- NTNU Morphogenetic Engineering
- NTNU Phenomics Technology
- NTNU Tissue Engineering
- NTNU Synthetic Biology Engineering
- NTNU Therapeutic Targeting
- NTNU Responsible Research and Innovation
Finished project
(R) NTNU Morphogenetic Engineering Blurb
NTNU Morphogenetic Engineering
Novel engineering concepts exploiting nature's capacity for self-organization has numerous applications.
Research activity
Classical engineered products are generally made of a number of unique, heterogeneous components assembled in very precise ways according to elaborate blueprints made by their designers. Morphogenetic engineering is an emerging field that explores the possibilities for establishing novel engineering concepts based on design and implementation of autonomous systems capable of developing complex, heterogeneous morphologies and functions that can be constructed through exploitation of self-organization principles without the guidance of an elaborate blueprint, while still being controllable and still performing in a highly predictable way. The living world excels in making use of self-organization to construct immensely complex and reliable structures from a basic set of quite simple principles. It is high time that engineering starts to take advantage of the same principles.
Besides contributing to the generic theoretical foundation this new engineering concept has to stand on, which we have dubbed morphogenetic cybernetics, we aim through this R&D stream to illustrate the strength of the morphogenetic engineering approach within tissue engineering, nanotechnology and biopolymer design.
We are in the process of developing a morphogenetic cybernetics research programme aiming to formally anchor the control issues of morphogenetic engineering to deeper mathematics and control theory. Despite the tremendous versatility of current control theory, such a research programme is sorely in demand as current theory lacks critical elements of the generic theoretical repository needed to make it qualify as a real enabler of morphogenetic engineering visions.
The form-generating capacity of living systems dwarfs that of other open physical systems. The major reason for this is that the presence of DNA allows living systems to induce perturbations of their own dynamics as a function of their system states, capacitating them to induce state space trajectory changes and topological reconfigurations of the state space as such. Living things are thus physical realisations of dynamical systems with dynamical structures ((DS)2) under systems control. Consequently, to become a real enabling foundation for morphogenetic engineering, we have to transcend the current theoretical framework of control engineering by mastering the mathematical encoding, design, control and optimisation of systems where the systems structures themselves become dynamic control variables. All metaphors have limits beyond which their usefulness break down or even hamper constructive thinking, but M. C. Escher’s famous lithograph “Drawing Hands” is a most fitting pictorial metaphor for the (DS)2 concept.