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.
> 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.
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, as protein folding hasn't been nearly "solved" by alphafold as has been reported in many places.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
SMEs please correct the record if I'm mistaken.
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
Demonstrate the ability to cryopreserve and recover live wild-type mice with high viability.
> 06 - Somatic limb regeneration
Demonstrate 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
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
At least those things cannot be solved by just burning GPT tokens.
EDISON SCIENTIFIC · FUTUREHOUSE
SAM RODRIQUES · MICHAELA HINKS
https://edisonscientific.com/team
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.
> 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.