AutoDNA: AI-native lab for autonomous biomolecular engineering

Researchers have developed AutoDNA, an AI-native autonomous laboratory for biomolecular engineering that performs complex experiments across diverse instruments with minimal human oversight, marking a significant advance in automated scientific discovery. The system autonomously coordinates over 20 instrument types across more than 11,000 steps for core nucleic acid operations like synthesis, transcription, amplification, and sequencing, with human intervention limited to hardware maintenance such as reagent replenishment. In tests, AutoDNA matched expert-optimized DNA synthesis yields, accelerated concurrent protocol execution by 3.2-fold, and completed a full DNA data storage cycle with exact digital content recovery. AutoDNA also identified and validated a clinically detected KRAS G13D mutation, demonstrating practical biomedical utility. The system's co-design of models, experiments, and instruments enables AI and automation to evolve together, establishing a blueprint toward "science-as-a-service" that could accelerate biological discovery and advance synthetic biology and information storage applications.