Biotech

Mirror Life: The Science We May Choose Not to Build

All life on Earth is one-handed. A few labs are learning to build the mirror image, and the scientists closest to the work are asking the world to stop before a mirror cell can copy itself.

Right Drug, Wrong Patient: The AI Out to End Cancer's Costliest Mistake

A model published in Nature Medicine reads a tumour's gene activity to predict who will benefit from immunotherapy, and it works across many cancers and drugs, not just one.

The Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day

Six deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday. Here is your first taste of each.

A Chip That Writes DNA With Electricity and Water

A Harvard-led team turned a silicon chip into a DNA printer: 64 sequences written in parallel using electric currents and enzymes in water, replacing the solvent-heavy chemistry biology has relied on since the 1980s. The printing press moment for synthetic biology.

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six More Deep Dives, One a Day

Mind-reading AI, a chip that writes DNA, one free download that drives 20 robots, and the signal holding up civilisation. Six deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday.

Choose the "Best" Embryo, Then Rewrite It: The New Baby Business Is Open

One technology ranks IVF embryos by predicted IQ and disease; another wants to edit them. What embryo screening and gene editing can really do, and can't.

The Frontier Week Ahead: Six Deep Dives, One a Day

Six spoilers- for next week's deep dives, one a day, Monday to Saturday.

AI Can Now Spot Cancer Years Before You'd Feel It

Plus: China's eerily lifelike humanoid, why bosses say data (not models) is the moat against LLMs, Russia's $60B bid to become SpaceX, home batteries turned power plants, and the Pentagon's encryption countdown.

Can AI Actually Do Science? A Brutal New Test Keeps Score

Plus: robots learning to feel, a contested claim to have built life from scratch, China's fusion-magnet milestone, a tiny engine aimed at Mars, and quantum error-fixing as a free download.

The Future of Video Editing? Tell Google's AI What to Change — and It Does It

Plus: a humanoid robot pulls a multi-day shift, a monthly shot that silences a gene, a battery made of CO2, NASA's private cargo run to the Moon, and a quantum computer that fits in a server rack.

A Robot Tow-Truck Launches Today to Save a Falling NASA Telescope

Plus: NVIDIA hands AI agents a real science lab, robots learn from video games, a world-first cell therapy cracks a solid tumour, a walk-away-safe reactor finds a grid partner, and an AI designs quantum codes humans couldn't.

The First AI-Born Hair-Loss Drug Just Faced Humans — and Won Round One

No chemist drew Absci's ABS-201 — a generative AI invented the antibody for pattern hair loss and endometriosis. It just cleared the first safety checkpoint in real people; whether it works is the next question.

The Machines Sucking CO2 From the Sky Just Got Real — and Cheaper

Plus: Washington gates the most powerful AI, a humanoid takes a real shift at BMW, an AI-designed antibody clears its first human safety test, the next Starship lights up, and quantum hits a real milestone.

The Signal — America's quantum moonshot, and the quiet race to lock your data first

A US executive order pours the government into quantum computing — and braces for the day it breaks today's encryption. Plus five more signals from the frontier.

The Signal — The $20,000 home robot has arrived, with a human quietly on call

A walking humanoid you can buy for your living room is shipping this year — but the laundry-folding demo hides a remote helper. Plus six more signals from the frontier.

The Signal — A battery of iron and air could be clean energy's missing piece

Cheap storage that lasts days, not hours, is the part that finally lets a grid run on sun and wind — plus five more signals from the frontier.

The Signal — AI is now hunting bugs in the code the whole internet runs on

For two years the fear was AI helping hackers. Now it's patching the open-source code almost everything online depends on — plus six more signals from the frontier.

The Signal — A robot is flying across the Pacific to rescue a NASA telescope

Launch is becoming routine. The new frontier in space is keeping, moving and rescuing what's already up there — plus six more signals.