Functional genomic hypothesis generation and experimentation by a robot scientist

Ross D. King, Kenneth E. Whelan, Ffion M. Jones, Philip G K Reiser, Christopher H. Bryant, Stephen H. Muggleton, Douglas B. Kell, Stephen G. Oliver

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    The question of whether it is possible to automate the scientific process is of both great theoretical interest and increasing practical importance because, in many scientific areas, data are being generated much faster than they can be effectively analysed. We describe a physically implemented robotic system that applies techniques from artificial intelligence to carry out cycles of scientific experimentation. The system automatically originates hypotheses to explain observations, devises experiments to test these hypotheses, physically runs the experiments using a laboratory robot, interprets the results to falsify hypotheses inconsistent with the data, and then repeats the cycle. Here we apply the system to the determination of gene function using deletion mutants of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and auxotrophic growth experiments. We built and tested a detailed logical model (involving genes, proteins and metabolites) of the aromatic amino acid synthesis pathway. In biological experiments that automatically reconstruct parts of this model, we show that an intelligent experiment selection strategy is competitive with human performance and significantly outperforms, with a cost decrease of 3-fold and 100-fold (respectively), both cheapest and random-experiment selection.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)247-252
    Number of pages5
    JournalNature
    Volume427
    Issue number6971
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 15 Jan 2004

    Research Beacons, Institutes and Platforms

    • Manchester Institute of Biotechnology

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Functional genomic hypothesis generation and experimentation by a robot scientist'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this