Why personalized gene editing, genetic resurrections and embryo scoring made our list. Earlier this week, published its annual list of Ten Breakthrough Technologies. As always, it features technologies that made the news last year, and which--for better or worse--stand to make waves in the coming years. They're the technologies you should really be paying attention to. This year's list includes tech that's set to transform the energy industry, artificial intelligence, space travel --and of course biotech and health. Our breakthrough biotechnologies for 2026 involve editing a baby's genes and, separately, resurrecting genes from ancient species.

London-listed miner Anglo American and Canada's Teck Resources plan to merge, marking the sector's second-biggest mergers and acquisitions deal ever and forging a new global copper-focused heavyweight. Under the proposed deal, which will require regulatory approvals and was announced on Tuesday, Anglo American shareholders will own 62.4 percent of the new company, Anglo Teck, while shareholders in Teck would hold 37.6 percent. The deal to form the world's fifth-largest copper company is also a big bet on copper by Anglo. Glencore's $90bn merger with Xstrata in 2013 remains the largest mining deal in history. Copper, used in the power and construction sectors, is set to benefit from burgeoning demand spurred by electric vehicles and artificial intelligence.

Adobe has abandoned its $20bn (£15.8bn) The Photoshop owner, which dominates the market with products including Illustrator and Acrobat Reader, said the two companies had come to a joint assessment that there was "no clear path" to regulatory approval. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority said last month that the deal would threaten competition in the product design, image editing and illustration markets. "There is no clear path to receive necessary regulatory approvals from the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority," the companies said in the joint statement. "Adobe and Figma strongly disagree with the recent regulatory findings, but we believe it is in our respective best interests to move forward independently," the chair and chief executive of Adobe, Shantanu Narayen, said.

The Israeli medical imaging vendor Nanox says it has a vision for the future of healthcare to address health disparities and lack of access to care. It envisions a new business model and plans to leverage a package of new technologies, including cold-cathode X-ray technology to help reduce costs, coupled with a new and inexpensive imaging system that combines teleradiology with artificial intelligence (AI). The business model is to enable any clinic or hospital in the developing world or rural areas to access its technology and no upfront costs using a pay-per-exam fee. The exams will be read by remote teleradiologists, including subspecialists, and AI will help augment clinical staff and radiologists to offer additional health screenings for all patients scanned. After a few years of talk, the vendor now appears on the edge of making this a reality.

Tesla Inc's advanced driver assistant software will not gain regulatory approval in 2022, Chief Executive Elon Musk said, signaling that the company is not yet able to satisfy authorities that its cars can be driven without someone behind the wheel. Tesla sells a $15,000 software add-on called "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) which enables its vehicles to change lanes and park autonomously. That complements its standard "Autopilot" feature, enabling cars to steer, accelerate and brake within their lanes without driver intervention. However, Tesla says the cars still need to be driven with human oversight. A highly autonomous vehicle would require regulatory approval in California, for example.

Elon Musk, a man not known for thinking small, has taken to the stage at an energy conference to announce his goals for the rest of the year. The Tesla chief said that he hopes his company's self-driving cars will be'in wide release' in the US and Europe by the end of 2022. Speaking at Offshore Northern Seas 2022 in Norway yesterday, he claimed that the launch of the autonomous electric vehicles depends on regulatory approval. The billionaire also said that he was focusing on the SpaceX Starship spacecraft, that had an orbital flight scheduled for this summer that has now been delayed. SpaceX was granted a license for this flight by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission earlier this month, and is now targeting a six-month window that opens on September 1. Musk told the audience: 'The two technologies I am focused on, trying to ideally get done before the end of the year, are getting our Starship into orbit ... and then having Tesla cars to be able to do self-driving.

Legalizing Level 4 autonomous driving could place Japan in pole position to lead the world in advancing the rollout of the technology. The nation's National Police Agency has announced that it aims to create a legal framework for Level 4 self-driving cars operating within limited areas. This move follows Germany's push to lead the way in Europe allowing Level 3 automated driving by changing federal legislation in summer, a move that echoed Japan's own change of law to allow Level 3 driving for the Honda Legend sedan in April 2021. These changes in law allow the disconnection of the human driver from mission critical operations during certain portions of a journey when the automated functions are activated. The latest move, If approved by the legislators in Japan, should lead to the commercialization of Level 4 self-driving cars in shared mobility, where vehicles can operate without human interaction.

Mobileye, a subsidiary of Intel, has expanded its autonomous vehicle testing program to New York City as part of its strategy to develop and deploy the technology. New York City joins a number of other cities, including Detroit, Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo, where Mobileye has either launched testing or plans to this year. Mobileye launched its first test fleet in Jerusalem in 2018 and added one in Munich in 2020. "If we want to build something that will scale, we need to be able to drive in challenging places and almost everywhere," Mobileye president and CEO Amnon Shashua said during a presentation Tuesday that was streamed live. As part of the announcement, Mobileye also released a 40-minute unedited video of one of its test vehicles equipped with a self-driving system navigating New York's city streets.

Clinical AI company Sensyne Health has received regulatory approval in the UK for its SYNE-COV machine learning algorithm for COVID-19 risk prediction. SYNE-COV analyses over 60 variables in the patient electronic health record to generate a prediction of the likelihood of a COVID-19 positive patient developing severe disease, requiring ventilation or admission to intensive care. It provides the risk prediction, together with an explanation of the result, to help clinicians manage patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 infection. The SYNE-COV product was developed in collaboration between Sensyne and the Chelsea & Westminster Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. This is the first algorithm developed from the SENSE clinical and operational algorithm engine to achieve UK regulatory approval.

A prosthetic hand that can grip and move like a normal hand could restore over 90 per cent of functionality to people with upper-limb amputations, developers claim. A team of orthopedists, industrial designers and patients worked with scientists from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy, on the artificial hand named Hannes. The limb was designed to accurately replicate the size, weight, appearance, and natural grasping motion of a human hand to help people gain near normal control. Researchers claim Hannes is ready for market and has been given regulatory approval. The team are now working to find investors to make it a reality.