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Registration for the 2026 Virtual Cell Challenge is open at virtualcellchallenge.org. This year the task is zero-shot: we are not releasing a training set, and the evaluation dataset is far more expansive than last year’s challenge. Models must predict CRISPRi knockdown responses in six cell lines they have never seen perturbed, using only the unperturbed state of those cells and a list of genes to knock down. The grand prize is $100,000, and the Challenge is again sponsored by NVIDIA, 10x Genomics, and Ultima Genomics.

Four years ago, John Pluvinage was a neurology resident at UCSF trying to solve one patient's mystery: a 67-year-old woman whose memory and ability to walk were declining, whose bloodwork kept coming back normal, and whose diagnosis was inconclusive.

Programmable biology has arrived in a few different ways, each time defined by a new type of RNA-guided mechanism: RNA interference, then CRISPR systems for programmable cutting of nucleic acids. More recently, in 2024, we uncovered the first RNA-guided DNA recombinases. These bridge recombinases bind bridge RNAs: bispecific guide RNAs able to recognize two different DNA molecules simultaneously.

Arc has appointed Usman Muzaffar as Chief Technology Officer. In this role, he will oversee the Computational Technology Center and Infrastructure teams, while advancing the Institute’s Virtual Cell Initiative, Arc’s full-stack approach to generating training data and building virtual cell models.

For years, biological research has relied on assembling natural components through trial-and-error or screening thousands of candidates until something worked. While powerful AI models for protein design, RNA engineering, and gene regulation have the potential to accelerate this process, they remain isolated in computational silos, out of reach for many experimental biologists. Today, the Laboratory of Evolutionary Design, led by Brian Hie, is releasing Proto, a framework that integrates these diverse AI tools to enable complex, multi-modal biological design.