Grounding AI agents in biological reality: Building blocks for autonomous wet labs
Google Research presents three projects connecting AI agents with wet-lab experimentation through VERID laboratory automation, closed-loop aptamer discovery, and de novo protein binder design. Across three rounds, aptamer on-target hit rates reached 33.5% for myoglobin and 42.1% for α-thrombin; the protein design pipeline accelerated computational cycles more than eightfold and produced binders with single-digit nanomolar affinity. Integrating these projects remains a next step, with safeguards including sequence screening, simulation before robot execution, and human authorization and supervision.
Why it matters: The aptamer experiments illustrate how experimental feedback can expose misleading optimization targets, offering a transferable approach to distinguishing genuine biological improvements from artifacts in automated discovery workflows.
