May was a very busy month in AI × bio. May 19 in particular. That was the day Nature published a cluster of papers on AI systems that propose hypotheses, plan experiments, search scientific software, and analyze results. Yes, the AI scientists are truly here.
But the month’s biggest release probably belongs to Biohub, which gave the scientific community - free of charge - what it calls a world model for proteins.
Around that, the field kept moving in every direction at once. Isomorphic Labs raised $2.1 billion, with Demis Hassabis saying its drug design approach is now “fundamentally sound.” A robot with nimble fingers used ordinary lab tools instead of a robot-proofed lab. David Liu’s team used AI to improve prime editing - a gene-editing method designed to rewrite DNA without cutting both strands. And RefusalBench showed that biology safety filters in language models are still badly calibrated in both directions - sometimes refusing ordinary research, sometimes helping with prompts they should stop.
Here are the ten biggest stories from the past four weeks - in no particular order. Each one links back to the original issue if you want more of the context.
Let’s dive in.