An AI-native experimental laboratory for autonomous biomolecular engineering

TL;DR

This paper introduces an AI-native autonomous laboratory capable of managing complex biomolecular experiments, optimizing processes, and serving multiple users without human intervention, advancing autonomous scientific research.

Contribution

It presents a novel end-to-end autonomous laboratory platform for complex biomolecular engineering, supporting multi-objective experiments and co-evolving AI models and instruments.

Findings

Achieves state-of-the-art performance in nucleic acid functions autonomously.

Enhances instrument utilization and experimental efficiency in multi-user settings.

Supports applications in diagnostics, drug development, and information storage.

Abstract

Autonomous scientific research, capable of independently conducting complex experiments and serving non-specialists, represents a long-held aspiration. Achieving it requires a fundamental paradigm shift driven by artificial intelligence (AI). While autonomous experimental systems are emerging, they remain confined to areas featuring singular objectives and well-defined, simple experimental workflows, such as chemical synthesis and catalysis. We present an AI-native autonomous laboratory, targeting highly complex scientific experiments for applications like autonomous biomolecular engineering. This system autonomously manages instrumentation, formulates experiment-specific procedures and optimization heuristics, and concurrently serves multiple user requests. Founded on a co-design philosophy of models, experiments, and instruments, the platform supports the co-evolution of AI models and the automation system. This establishes an end-to-end, multi-user autonomous laboratory that handles complex, multi-objective experiments across diverse instrumentation. Our autonomous laboratory supports fundamental nucleic acid functions-including synthesis, transcription, amplification, and sequencing. It also enables applications in fields such as disease diagnostics, drug development, and information storage. Without human intervention, it autonomously optimizes experimental performance to match state-of-the-art results achieved by human scientists. In multi-user scenarios, the platform significantly improves instrument utilization and experimental efficiency. This platform paves the way for advanced biomaterials research to overcome dependencies on experts and resource barriers, establishing a blueprint for science-as-a-service at scale.