pfisherman
Biology already has numerous "Millennium Problems" and the
rewards are much more than $1M. For example, reverse
Alzheimer's Disease. Or less ambitious develop high
fidelity in vitro and animal models of human disease.
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doctoboggan
Someone should make the millennium problems for AI
alignment so the frontier labs will actually try to solve
that problem.
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> daveguy
You'd think that believing they are going to destroy
humanity would motivate them.
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> > alansaber
They're for-profit corporations above all.
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trott
> The problem would likely be even more impactful if
solved in general for small molecule binders, rather than
protein binders or antibodies. However, with small
molecule binders, synthesis is a major bottleneck that
would limit validation, and thus we have chosen to
restrict the scope to protein binders.For small-molecule
synthesis, there is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_chemistry -- people at
my former employer got the Nobel Prize for it. I believe
there are companies that let you order such molecules from
a set of about a billion, and they synthesize them
on-the-fly.
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sajithdilshan
Do we really have to solve these problems though? Why
would anyone want to have an inferior bio limb when they
can substitute it with a superior and easily
repairable/upgradable mechanical limb? Granted that the
artificial limbs we have right now are pretty basic, but
wouldn't it make sense to improve it rather than trying to
grow new limbs?Also if you think humans would ever become
a space faring species, would it really make sense to
stick to our carbon based biology or should we invest in
transforming into silicon based beings
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> RamblingCTO
You should really step outside more and touch some
grass
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> > alansaber
"Your limb replacement technology is very good,
but I believe humanity should transform into
silicon-based beings, and so for that reason i'm
out"- dragons den 2030
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PaulKeeble
Its much harder to produce a good fundamental list of
biology problems because we are no where near as far
along, so many basic things are not understood. There are
still many unknown unknowns and these particular problems
are limited to the realm of verifiable in a lab, which
rules out much of what makes biology interesting and hard
to study, and that is the organisms themselves and the
interactions between their cells. The petri dish differs
from the rat differs from the human and that is a part of
what makes biology harder to progress.None of these is
likely the root to the wide array of chronic illnesses we
can't treat and those seem like the next step to really
put a lot of research into given how many people suffer
from them and where we are today they seem achievable with
the right investment.
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> shevy-java
> The petri dish differs from the rat differs from the
human and that is a part of what makes biology harder
to progress.They all use DNA.But I agree that nobody
has shown in the lab how any of this leads to a
genetic system that can self-reproduce reliably and
assemble biomolecules/metabolites. This is a missing
link. Just showing how RNA or amino acids arise, says
nothing about any genetic system. They can not even
answer whether RNA or DNA viruses existed first; and
whether these existed before organisms/cells did.
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> > HarHarVeryFunny
The goal of the suggested "origins of life" goal,
as written, isn't to guess at history - it's to
create some similar plausible self-emergent system
in the lab.Seems a bit of an ambitious goal for a
language model though! There are presumably dozens
of steps before you get to an RNA-based full-blown
cell, and it's only been very recently that humans
have managed to make an artificial
self-replicating cell of any type in the lab.
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daoboy
This is all well outside my area of expertise, but my
impression is that Michael Levin's work with
bioelectricity is on the cusp of #6 Somatic limb
regeneration.SMEs please correct the record if I'm
mistaken.
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> jodacola
Unfamiliar with Levin's work, but:There's also this
study [0] I read recently, along a different path of
using known growth factors and proteins to kick off
regeneration.[0]
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-72066-8
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ak_111
Not an expert, but as I understand from my colleagues you
can make a case for lots of really important problems
related to protein folding to be included in the list. As
protein folding hasn't been nearly "solved" by alphafold
as has been reported in many places.
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dnautics
These are almost all so stupid. Written by people who
clearly don't know their chemistryReverse translatase and
protein amplification in particular.How the fuck do you
plan on selectively priming protein amplification. If you
know ANY protein chemistry, you will know "the juice is
not worth the squeeze" -- how would I exponentially
amplify a protein? I'd do mass spec proteomics, synthesize
the DNA, and express it.Simply amazing that
electrofixation is not on the list.
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> dnautics
Which ones are not stupid?Cryopreservation, even
though I don't care much for it.The rubisco one is
sort of not dumb, but if you actually care about
carbon fixation you'd just not bother using rubisco at
all instead.Programmable Proteases is fine.Somatic
regeneration is fine.
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hn3ufz62f7
Agreeing on the model gap, the bit left out is that even
human-to-human it breaks. Same drug, same dose, wildly
different response depending on genotype and gut flora.
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thehamkercat
> 02 - CryopreservationDemonstrate the ability to
cryopreserve and recover live wild-type mice with high
viability.> 06 - Somatic limb regenerationDemonstrate the
ability to regenerate lost limbs in adult wild-type
mice.Interesting, but looks like these problems are
proposed in September 2026, unlike original 7 Millennium
Prize Problems of Maths
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> Sharlin
Of course. This is just a list of someone's ideas for
equivalently difficult (and transformative) unsolved
problems in biology. Many of these would of course
have obvious and immediately impactful practical
applications, unlike the math problems.
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> ginko
> Demonstrate the ability to cryopreserve and recover
live wild-type mice with high viability.I thought we
already managed to successfully cryopreserve and
recover small rodents like hamsters in the 50s.Edit:
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryopreservation#History
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> gignico
> 06 - Somatic limb regenerationAt least those things
cannot be solved by just burning GPT tokens.
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alabhyajindal
So anyone can create a list of problems and slap the name
Millennium Problems on them?
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> LogicalBorg
The Millennium Problems list in math was created in
2000, hence the name. There is a $1 million prize for
solving any of the problems. Creating this list is
just someone's idea of listing problems of equal
importance. The name doesn't fit and it's just a list.
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yewenjie
Who is this by? Who verifies the result? Is there prize
money?
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> fragmede
On the page, it saysEDISON SCIENTIFIC ·
FUTUREHOUSESAM RODRIQUES · MICHAELA
HINKShttps://edisonscientific.com/team
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cupantae
Slap an LLM on those and call it a day
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> alansaber
Need to scrape the logs from some leading researchers
first
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Q6T46nT668w6i3m
It's strange they are all engineering problems.
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> HarHarVeryFunny
What would be your idea of a biology problem that
isn't an "engineering" one?It seems that understanding
biology could be characterized as trying to figure out
"how did nature engineer this".For that matter isn't
all of science this way?
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> analog31
In a sense all experimental science has an element of
engineering. For instance the first problem, "the
origins of life" is framed to require an experiment to
show that any proposed mechanism actually works.
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> ClaraForm
Right? Where's the substrates of consciousness, or the
actual solutions for protein/rna folding, or the
requirements for evolution?
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> > anon48293
Substrates of consciousness? You mean the neural
correlates of consciousness which we already have?
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> > > ClaraForm
As a neuroscientist: no. Not what I mean.
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bonsai_spool
This is a collection of pet projects by folks who are not
distinguished biologists. Interesting, maybe, but not to
be placed on the same pedestal as the mathematics
Millenium Prize of a similar name.Arguably, the origin of
life is a question for all time -- no way that a VC
webpage is going to change whether someone takes that
problem on, and it will be commercialized with big-name
capitalists instead of 'FutureHouse' should it ever be
developed in the lab.
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freebsd_lovefes
It's missing some important stuff? Like creating bacteria
that can produce fuels or break down plastics.
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> flexagoon
Bacteria that break down plastic already exist, both
naturally and synthetically. Optimizing those is one
of the most popular student projects in my university.
Hardly a millennium problem.
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> bonsai_spool
It's inane, actually - I thought this might be
something put on by an Allen Institute or some
actually well-respected organization.
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himinlomax
It's missing an obvious one: morphogenesis.
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> kevlened
That's number 6: limb regeneration.
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Mistletoe
I'm going to be honest, I don't know if improving Rubsico
is possible. Nature has had every reason to and billions
of years. It's optimized as far as it can go and you
either lose speed or specificity, I don't think having
both is possible.
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> dsign
Your statement piked out my interest and I went
searching for what Rubisco was. My prediction is that
this particular one will be cracked out soon, and at
around 2045, creating disgustingly efficient variants
of RuBisCO along with other photosynthesis mechanisms
will be AGIs' hot hobby.That there are no more
efficient variations of it in nature just tells us
that the local minimum is really deep and that natural
evolution, as it is, can't produce anything better,
not even with a billion years and 10^30 organisms
serving as a "brute force lab". It's also the kind of
problem an AGI system would tackle for purely
ideological reasons, i.e. to prove that it is superior
to nature.
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shevy-java
> Demonstrate the emergence of life from chemical
precursors in a laboratory setting.> Specifically,
demonstrate the unassisted emergence of self replicating
RNA- and protein-based cells from a plausible primordial
soup with a plausible energy source. A "cell" may be any
compartment with a defined boundary.So, right now, nobody
can explain how life originated. Proving that aminoacids,
DNA or RNA form, does NOT mean that this is equal to life.
This is a problem that the whole field has - it still can
not explain how life originated. Showing that individual
components can arise spontaneously, is not the same as
showing e. g. how a cell formed and so forth. Where does
the encoding problem fit into any of that, for instance?
You need to prove how you can assemble systems. Just
having a working ribosome does not connect it to DNA as a
genetic backup system; and RNA tends to be unstable. Even
when you have assumptions how this works together, you
need to prove that this is how things originate(d). Nobody
has done so since decades. It is an unsolved problem.
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monegator
is it yet another vibecoded website? akin to the poster
discussion, all vibecoded websites do not need to look
like the same, please put some care or taste in your
prompts.
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