synthetic biology

Robotic platform runs two genetic codes simultaneously

Scientists have developed a way to run two separate genetic codes at the same time within a single biological system, bypassing one of the most fundamental constraints in synthetic biology. The research, published in Nature on August 26, 2026, introduces…

MIT engineers build living circuit boards from bacteria

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have engineered bacteria to function as transistors, creating "living circuit boards" that can be printed onto growth medium in Petri dishes and perform basic computational logic using chemical signals instead of electricity.

AI designs first functional viruses not found in nature

Researchers at Stanford University and the Arc Institute have used artificial intelligence to design 16 functional viruses with genomes never before seen in nature, in what scientists describe as a "very significant turning point" for synthetic biology. The work, published…

Doudna team uses AI to design novel CRISPR-like enzymes

A team led by Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna has developed an artificial intelligence platform capable of designing synthetic genome-editing enzymes that match or surpass the performance of their natural counterparts, according to a study published in Science on July 16,…

Scientists build synthetic cell from scratch for first time

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have created SpudCell, a synthetic cell assembled entirely from non-living chemical components that can feed, grow, replicate its genome, and divide — a first in the decades-long quest to build life in…