'Set it and forget it': automated lab uses AI and robotics to improve proteins

Proteins were made in a laboratory by a completely autonomous robot.Credit: Panther Media GmbH/Alamy A'self-driving' laboratory comprising robotic equipment directed by a simple artificial intelligence (AI) model successfully reengineered enzymes without any input from humans -- save for the occasional hardware fix. "It is cutting-edge work," says Héctor García Martín, a physicist and synthetic biologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. "They are fully automating the whole process of protein engineering." Self-driving labs meld robotic equipment with machine-learning models capable of directing experiments and interpreting results to design new procedures. The hope, say researchers, is that autonomous labs will turbo-charge the scientific process and come up with solutions that humans might not have thought of on their own.