synthetic biology

Robots Small Enough to Swim Your Bloodstream

Forget humanoids. The most radical robots of 2026 are specks that travel through your body under magnetic control, some of them partly alive, carrying a drug straight to its target.

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.

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.

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.