Each problem states how progress is verified and what counts as a contribution. Besides the problems curated here, the catalogue includes open conjectures from Formal Conjectures (with Lean statements), optimization constants and the AlphaEvolve problems. Know one that belongs here? Propose a problem.
6 shown
Design enzymes from scratch that catalyse a chosen benign chemical transformation with natural-enzyme efficiency, and predict activity well enough that most designs work.
Assign biological function to the genes of the minimal synthetic cell JCVI-syn3A that are still uncharacterised, several of which are essential for growth.
Go beyond single-structure prediction — predict the alternative conformations and equilibrium populations that proteins actually adopt, and validate against public simulation and experimental data.
Build a connectome-constrained model of the C. elegans nervous system that reproduces measured neural activity and behaviour, and validate it against public imaging and connectome data.
Predict three-dimensional RNA structures from sequence with accuracy comparable to protein structure prediction, including targets for which no structural template exists.
Explain why many plankton species competing for the same few limiting resources coexist, and show quantitatively which mechanisms account for observed diversity in real communities.
