Aberystwyth robot discovery rated fourth most significant of 2009 by Time

Time Magazine has rated the discovery of new scientific knowledge by ‘Adam’, the robot scientist developed by Professor Ross King and colleagues at the Department of Computer Science, as the fourth most significant scientific discovery of 2009.

The discovery of simple but new scientific knowledge by Adam about the genomics of the baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, an organism used by scientists to model more complex life systems, was published in the journal Science in April 2009.

Led by Professor King, researchers at Aberystwyth and the University of Cambridge designed Adam to carry out each stage of the scientific process automatically without the need for further human intervention.

Using artificial intelligence, Adam hypothesised that certain genes in baker’s yeast code for specific enzymes which catalyse biochemical reactions in yeast. It then devised experiments to test these predictions, ran the experiments using laboratory robotics, interpreted the results and repeated the cycle.

Adam’s hypotheses were confirmed as being both novel and correct by the researchers who conducted separate manual experiment and reached the same conclusions. The publication of the findings sparked world wide media interest.

Speaking at the time Prof Ross King, said: “Because biological organisms are so complex it is important that the details of biological experiments are recorded in great detail. This is difficult and irksome for human scientists, but easy for Robot Scientists.”

“Ultimately we hope to have teams of human and robot scientists working together in laboratories”.

Adam is still a prototype, but Prof King’s team believe that their next robot, Eve, holds great promise for scientists searching for new drugs to combat diseases such as malaria and schistosomiasis, an infection caused by a type of parasitic worm in the tropics.

“If science was more efficient it would be better placed to help solve society’s problems. One way to make science more efficient is through automation. Automation was the driving force behind much of the 19th and 20th century progress, and this is likely to continue”, Professor King added.

The work was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales amongst others.