Dissecting the Biological Motherboard (Systems Biology and Beyond)

Genome-scale molecular networks, including gene pathways, gene regulatory networks and protein interactions, are central to the investigation of the nascent disciplines of systems biology and bio-complexity. Dissecting these genome-scale molecular networks in its all-possible manifestations is paramount in our quest for a genotype-input phenotype-output application which will also take environment-genome interactions into account.

Machine learning approaches are now increasingly being used for reverse engineering such networks. Our work stresses the importance of a system approach in biological research and how artificial neural networks are at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence techniques that are increasingly being used to construct as well as dissect molecular networks, the building blocks of the living system.

Our paper will show the application of artificial neural networks to reverse engineer a temporal gene pathway 
In this paper we will also explore the pruning of nodes of these artificial neural networks to simulate gene silencing and thus generate novel biological insight into these molecular networks (The Biological Motherboard).

The research described is novel, in that this may be the first time that the application of neural networks to temporal gene expression data is described. It will be shown that a trained artificial neural network, with pruning, can also be described as a gene network with minimal re-interpretation, where the weights on links between nodes reflect the probability of one gene affecting another gene in time

Neural Membrane Signaling Platforms

Throughout much of the history of biology, the cell membrane was functionally defined as a semi-permeable barrier separating aqueous compartments, and an anchoring site for proteins. Little attention was devoted to its possible regulatory role in intracellular molecular processes and neuron electrical signaling. This article reviews the history of membrane studies and the current state of the art. Emphasis is placed on natural and artificial membrane studies of electric field effects on molecular organization, especially as these may relate to impulse propagation in neurons. Implications of these studies for new designs in artificial intelligence are briefly examined

Evaluating the Potential of Leading Large Language Models in Reasoning Biology Questions

Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have presented new opportunities for integrating Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) into biological research and education. This study evaluated the capabilities of leading LLMs, including GPT-4, GPT-3.5, PaLM2, Claude2, and SenseNova, in answering conceptual biology questions. The models were tested on a 108-question multiple-choice exam covering biology topics in molecular biology, biological techniques, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology. Among the models, GPT-4 achieved the highest average score of 90 and demonstrated the greatest consistency across trials with different prompts. The results indicated GPT-4's proficiency in logical reasoning and its potential to aid biology research through capabilities like data analysis, hypothesis generation, and knowledge integration. However, further development and validation are still required before the promise of LLMs in accelerating biological discovery can be realized

Genesis-DB: a database for autonomous laboratory systems

Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven laboratory automation - combining robotic labware and autonomous software agents - is a powerful trend in modern biology. We developed Genesis-DB, a database system designed to support AI-driven autonomous laboratories by providing software agents access to large quantities of structured domain information. In addition, we present a new ontology for modeling data and metadata from autonomously performed yeast microchemostat cultivations in the framework of the Genesis robot scientist system. We show an example of how Genesis-DB enables the research life cycle by modeling yeast gene regulation, guiding future hypotheses generation and design of experiments. Genesis-DB supports AI-driven discovery through automated reasoning and its design is portable, generic, and easily extensible to other AI-driven molecular biology laboratory data and beyond

Open problems in artificial life

This article lists fourteen open problems in artificial life, each of which is a grand challenge requiring a major advance on a fundamental issue for its solution. Each problem is briefly explained, and, where deemed helpful, some promising paths to its solution are indicated

The computer revolution in science: steps towards the realization of computer-supported discovery environments

The tools that scientists use in their search processes together form so-called discovery environments. The promise of artificial intelligence and other branches of computer science is to radically transform conventional discovery environments by equipping scientists with a range of powerful computer tools including large-scale, shared knowledge bases and discovery programs. We will describe the future computer-supported discovery environments that may result, and illustrate by means of a realistic scenario how scientists come to new discoveries in these environments. In order to make the step from the current generation of discovery tools to computer-supported discovery environments like the one presented in the scenario, developers should realize that such environments are large-scale sociotechnical systems. They should not just focus on isolated computer programs, but also pay attention to the question how these programs will be used and maintained by scientists in research practices. In order to help developers of discovery programs in achieving the integration of their tools in discovery environments, we will formulate a set of guidelines that developers could follow