If you have been a fan of the famous Star Trek series, and are familiar with the Emergency Medical Hologram program who can substitute for the regular medical staff or treat patients during emergency, then here is something similar that you can look forward to.

Well, almost similar.

Adam the Robot Scientist (Image courtesy of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council)

Two research teams from the Aberystwyth University in Wales have marked a major advance in the field of artificial intelligence, by creating a robotic system that has made a novel scientific discovery with virtually no human intellectual input.

The new robot called “Adam” has made independent scientific discoveries about the genetic make-up of baker’s yeast, which had been evading its human counterparts for quite awhile. Professor Ross King who led the project says that Adam’s discovery could play an important role in developing treatments and cures for various fungal diseases such as athlete’s foot.

The designers programmed Adam with a model of yeast metabolism, and with a database of proteins and genes which are involved in metabolism in other species. Adam sought out the gaps in the model, designed experiments to test out its hypotheses, and performed the experiments on its own using a fully automated laboratory. Adam’s findings were confirmed correct by separate manual checks by the researchers.

Adam is still under works - a prototype - but the researchers are already planning to unveil “Eve” which is supposed to hold great promise in researching on new drugs for combating diseases like malaria and schistosomiasis.

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