AI and the World's Hard Problems · Bioengineering & synthetic biology · arXiv · 2026-10-20
Aptamers as a sandbox for lab-in-the-loop agentic molecular discovery
This study tackles de novo molecular design by closing the loop between LLM-based agents and wet-lab experiments, using aptamer binder design as a testbed. Across three design-test-improve cycles, on-target hit rates for α-thrombin rose from 0.0% in Round 1 to 42.1% in Round 3. The agents also diagnosed cross-reactivity and restored on-target specificity from 19.1% to 72.4%, which the authors attribute to iterative experimental feedback.