South Africa’s Aiden Markram has been named the ICC Men’s Player of the Month for June 2025, following his match-winning performance in the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) Final against Australia at Lord’s.
Markram edged out fellow nominees, his teammate Kagiso Rabada and Sri Lanka’s top-order batter Pathum Nissanka, to claim the monthly honour.
The 30-year-old opener played a crucial role in helping the Proteas lift their first senior ICC trophy in 27 years.
He scored a magnificent 136 in the fourth innings of the WTC Final and also contributed with the ball, taking two important wickets, including that of Steve Smith, to set up a historic win for South Africa.
Reacting to the award, Markram said: “It is a privilege to receive this award. To contribute to an ICC World Test Championship win for our team and South Africa is something that means a lot to me.
Winning the final at Lord’s is a historic moment for South African cricket, and it is something we will all remember forever.
This victory was only possible due to the combined efforts of the entire team, with crucial contributions from KG (Kagiso Rabada) and Tembs (Temba Bavuma).”
Although Markram was dismissed for a duck in the first innings, he bounced back strongly in the second.
Chasing a target of 282, he guided the Proteas through a tense fourth innings, showing composure and maturity.
His partnerships with Wiaan Mulder and Temba Bavuma kept the innings steady, especially after the early loss of Ryan Rickelton.
When Bavuma faced an injury scare during the chase, Markram offered constant support. He eventually departed after scoring 136, anchoring the innings with control and calmness.
Before shining with the bat, Markram made a vital impact with the ball, breaking a strong partnership by dismissing Steve Smith with just his sixth delivery.
He later removed Josh Hazlewood in the second innings to wrap up Australia’s innings.
This memorable performance helped South Africa clinch their maiden ICC World Test Championship title, and Markram’s all-round efforts rightly earned him the ICC Men’s Player of the Month award.
This dispatch from what we might call the extended Colm Tóibín universe is set near the same time and in the same place as his earlier novel Brooklyn (one character appears in both books). It’s the story of a widowed woman who struggles to cope with life after love. If it lacks the drama of some of Tóibín’s other novels, the style is impeccable as ever, with irresistibly clean prose that reports emotional turmoil masked by restraint. There is no ornate showing off. “People used to tease me for it, saying: ‘Could you write a longer sentence?’” Tóibín has said. “But there’s nothing I can do about it.”
This short novel began as a play, which later became a Broadway flop. Tourists, observed Tóibín, are “going to take in only one Broadway show, and Bette Midler had just opened around the corner”. Jesus’s mother Mary is recalling the events around his crucifixion. Tóibín’s Mary is not meek and mild, but hardened by her experience, suspicious of his miracles and despairing of the followers who will take her son away from her. This is a rare first-person narrative for Tóibín, and his quiet style sometimes muffles the emotions Mary feels at Jesus’s suffering. In the end it’s a book not just about biblical figures, but about how strange our children become to us.
Tóibín’s second novel shows that his “deadpan” style was there from the start: “you’re never sure where the laughter is going to come from or where the sadness is”, as he described it to the Paris Review. There’s more sadness here than laughter – apart from the joke that it always seems to be raining. It’s the story of High Court judge Eamon Redmond, a conservative man in 1980s Ireland, where the next generation – including his children – is agitating for reform on social issues such as divorce and abortion. This book is also, says Tóibín, “the most direct telling of the grief and numbness” he felt as a child at his “abandonment” when his mother left the family for many months to attend his sick father in hospital.
Tóibín’s motto might be: If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother. Redoubtable mothers loom large in his work, and this is a whole book of stories about mothers and their sons. The best are novella-length – Tóibín is a novelist at heart – including one which features early appearances of Nancy and Jim from Brooklyn. These are stories of complicated love, laced with dark comedy. In one, a gangster with a drunken mother is selling stolen paintings to two Dutch criminals. One of the men, his associate tells him, “could kill you in one second with his bare hands”. “Which of them?” he asks. “That’s the problem,” comes the reply. “I don’t know.”
If Tóibín’s fiction tends toward low-key gloom, this novel about a gay Argentinian man of English ancestry is his happiest. Richard Garay frequently enjoys himself, especially now that his mother is dead. There’s a gusto in his resentment of her (“I am using, with particular relish, the heavy cotton sheets she was saving for some special occasion”) and an animal delight in his appreciation of the bodies of the men he loves. Even the darker stuff here – abductions, the fallout of the Falklands war – is described with almost cheerful energy.
It catapulted Tóibín from acclaimed literary novelist to bestseller, with the story of Eilis Lacey, a young woman in 1950s Ireland who seems utterly passive in her life. At least, that is, until she goes to the US – the sea crossing is a comic highlight, featuring motion sickness and a shared bathroom – and defies her family’s plans for her. Tóibín’s sensitive touch means Eilis feels like a real person, even when we want to give her a good shake. Adapted into a film in 2015 starring Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn delivers satisfying emotional tension despite its restrained heroine. It’s little wonder it has become Tóibín’s best-loved book.
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Last year’s sequel to Brooklyn takes up Eilis’s story 20 years on. It’s a more rounded novel, with a greater range of characters fully on display, and Eilis seems to have found some bottle in the intervening years. “Can you not control her?” her brother-in-law asks her husband, when she argues with their father. It’s also a portrait of a changing Ireland in the 1970s. And although Tóibín dislikes traditional historical fiction (“I hate people ‘capturing the period’”), he does capture the period beautifully, with a wealth of detail – including the introduction of the toasted cheese sandwich to Ireland’s pubs.
Tóibín’s fourth novel is clear, contained and complex. It is set in his literary comfort zone of coastal County Wexford, but there’s nothing complacent about this story, where traditional Ireland – singalongs with bodhrán drums – meets the modern crisis of Aids. It tells of three generations of women trying to get along together as a young man in their family dies. But it is also an acutely observed portrait of parenting young children (more mothers and sons), a retelling of the Greek myth of Orestes, Electra and Clytemnestra, and a rendering of Tóibín’s own childhood suffering around the sickness and death of his father. “I think if you’re not working, as a novelist, from some level of subconscious pain,” he has said, “then a thinness will get into your book.”
Tóibín’s longest novel is also one of his most gripping. This book about Thomas Mann is an exceptional achievement in imaginative empathy, covering six decades of the writer’s life: his self-regard, his literary genius, and the concealed love for beautiful young men that he subsumed into works such as Death in Venice. Tóibín shows Mann as calcified by his public austerity (at his mother’s funeral, his daughter sees him cry for the first time). Tóibín likes to poke fun at his own austere reputation. He writes, he once said, on a chair that is “one of the most uncomfortable ever made. After a day’s work, it causes pain in parts of the body you did not know existed” – but “it keeps me awake”.
Tóibín’s masterpiece – to date – explores the inner life of Henry James, a man who was “a mass of ambiguities”. The novel covers five years in James’s life, beginning with the failure of his 1895 play Guy Domville, but its scope is vast, teasing apart the public and private man. “Everyone he knew carried within them the aura of another life which was half secret and half open, to be known about but not mentioned.” James loves gossip and secrets but keeps his own hidden. “It was the closest he had come,” he recalls, thinking of one abandoned episode of attraction to another man, “but he had not come close at all.” The Master is subtle, funny, ingenious and emotionally wrenching. Tóibín even took enough influence from James to – finally – write in long sentences.
Astronomers are interested in finding planets of a similar size, composition, and temperature to Earth, also called Earth-like planets. However, there are challenges in this endeavor. Small, rocky planets are difficult to find because current planet-hunting methods are biased towards gas giants. Also, for a planet to be similar in temperature to Earth, it has to orbit a comparable distance from its host star, similar to Earth orbiting the Sun, which means it takes approximately a year to go around its star. This creates another problem for astronomers trying to find these planets, since searching for an Earth-like planet around just one star would involve dedicating a telescope to monitor it constantly for more than a year.
To save time spent operating telescopes, scientists need a new way to find stars that are good candidates for thorough searches before dedicating resources to observing them. One team of astronomers investigated whether observable properties of planetary systems could indicate the presence of Earth-like planets. They found that the arrangement of known planets in the system and the mass, radius, and distance from its closest planet to its star could be used to predict the occurrence of an Earth-like planet.
Then, the team tested how well machine learning could handle this task. They started by creating a sample set of planetary systems with and without Earth-like planets. Astronomers have only found around 5,000 stars in the sky with an orbiting exoplanet, which makes the sample size too small to train machine learning programs. So, the team generated 3 sets of planetary systems using a computational framework that simulates how planets form, called the Bern model.
The Bern model starts with 20 clumps of dust that are 600 meters, or about 2,000 feet, across. These clumps kickstart gas and dust accumulating into full-sized planets that form over 20 million years. Then the planetary system evolves over 10 billion years to an end state, called the synthetic planetary system, that the astronomers include in their dataset. They used this model to create 24,365 systems with stars the size of the Sun, 14,559 systems with stars ½ the size of the Sun, and 14,958 systems with stars ⅕ the size of the Sun. They also split each of these groups into 2 sub-groups, including a group with an Earth-like planet and a group without an Earth-like planet.
With these larger datasets, the team then tested whether a machine learning technique called a Random Forest model could categorize the planetary systems into those that likely had an Earth-like planet and those that did not. In a Random Forest, all the outputs are either true or false, and different parts of the program, called trees, make decisions on different subsections of the whole training dataset. The team decided that if a planetary system likely had 1 or more Earth-like planets, then the Random Forest should consider that “true.” The researchers tested their algorithm for accuracy using a metric known as a precision score.
They set up the Random Forest to base its decision on specific factors in each synthetic planetary system. These factors included the arrangement of planets astronomers could feasibly find if they looked at a similar real-life system, how many of those planets were in the system, how many planets bigger than 100 times the Earth’s mass were in the system, and the size and distance of the nearest planet to the star. The team used 80% of the synthetic planetary systems as training data and reserved the remaining 20% for the first testing of the completed algorithm.
The team found that their Random Forest model predicted where an Earth-like planet likely existed with a precision score of 0.99, meaning it correctly identified systems with Earth-like planets 99% of the time. Following this success, they tested their model on real data for 1,567 stars in a similar size range that are known to have at least 1 planet orbiting them. Of these, 44 passed their algorithm’s threshold for having an Earth-like planet. The team suggested most of the systems in this subset wouldn’t fall apart if an Earth-like planet were present.
The team concluded that their model could identify candidate stars for Earth-like planets, but with caveats. One was that their training data was still limited, as generating synthetic planetary systems takes a long time and is expensive. However, the bigger caveat was that they assumed the Bern model accurately simulated planetary formation. They suggested researchers rigorously test its validity for future theoretical work.
Researchers at MIT and other institutions have identified compounds that can fight off viral infection by activating a defense pathway inside host cells. These compounds, they believe, could be used as antiviral drugs that work against not just one but any kind of virus.
The researchers identified these compounds, which activate a host cell defense system known as the integrated stress response pathway, in a screen of nearly 400,000 molecules. In tests in human cells, the researchers showed that the compounds help cells fend off infection from RSV, herpes virus, and Zika virus. They also proved effective in combating herpes infection in a mouse model.
The research team now plans to test the compounds against additional viruses, in hopes of developing them for eventual clinical trials.
“We’re very excited about this work, which allows us to harness the stress response of the host cells to arrive at a means to identify and develop broad-spectrum antivirals,” says James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering.
Collins and Maxwell Wilson, an associate professor of molecular biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and chief scientific officer of Integrated Biosciences, are the senior authors of the new study, which appears in Cell. Felix Wong, a former MIT postdoc and chief executive officer of Integrated Biosciences, is the lead author of the paper. In addition to MIT, UCSB, and Integrated Biosciences, the research team also includes scientists from Illumina Ventures and Princeton University.
Boosting cell defense
In human cells, the integrated stress response pathway is turned on in response to viral infection as well as other types of stress such as starvation. During viral infection, the pathway is triggered by double-stranded RNA, a molecule produced during the replication cycle of viruses. When that RNA is detected, the cell shuts down protein synthesis, which blocks the virus from producing the proteins it needs to replicate.
Compounds that boost this pathway, the researchers believe, could be good candidates for new antiviral drugs that could combat any type of virus.
“Typically, how antivirals are developed is that you develop one antiviral for one specific virus,” Wong says. “In this case, we hypothesized that being able to modulate the host cell stress response might give us a new class of broad-spectrum antivirals — compounds that directly act on the host cells to alter something fundamental about how all viruses replicate.”
To help them identify compounds that would enhance the activity of this pathway during viral infection, the researchers invented a novel optogenetic screen. Optogenetics is a bioengineering technique that allows researchers to insert light-sensitive proteins into the genome of a cell. In this case, the researchers engineered modifications to a protein called PKR, which turns on the stress pathway, so that they could turn it on with light.
Using this technique, the researchers screened a library of nearly 400,000 commercially available and proprietary chemical compounds. Each of these compounds was applied to human cells as the cells were also exposed to blue light, which simulated viral infection by activating PKR.
By measuring the cells’ survival rates, the researchers could determine which compounds boosted activation of the pathway and amplified the cells’ ability to shut down viral reproduction. This screen yielded about 3,500 compounds with potential antiviral activity, which were evaluated further.
“If the pathway were turned on in response to viral infection, what our compounds do is they turn it on full blast,” Wong says. “Even in the presence of a small amount of virus, if the pathway is triggered, then the antiviral response is also maximized.”
Fighting infection
The researchers then selected eight of the most promising compounds and screened them for their ability to kill viruses while avoiding harmful effects in human cells. Based on these tests, the researchers chose three top candidates, which they called IBX-200, IBX-202, and IBX-204.
In cells that were infected with either Zika virus, herpes virus, or RSV, treatment with these compounds significantly reduced the amount of virus in the cells. The researchers then tested one of the compounds, IBX-200, in mice infected with herpes virus, and found that it was able to reduce the viral load and improve symptoms.
Experiments showed that these compounds appear to turn on an enzyme that is involved in detecting stress. This activates the stress response pathway and primes the cells to become more responsive to viral infection. When applied to cells that are not already infected, the compounds have no effect.
The researchers now plan to evaluate their lead candidates against a broader range of viruses. They also aim to identify additional compounds that activate the integrated stress response, as well as other cellular stress pathways with the potential to clear viral or bacterial infections.
The research was funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Office, and Integrated Biosciences.
If you’ve been told recently you need to go touch grass, this is for you. Whether you’re scrolling on your phone or working on a laptop, it’s too easy to rack up ungodly screen time numbers throughout the week. And I’m sure it’s not breaking news to you that screen time is not so great for your physical and mental health.
But even with good reason and intentions to limit your screen time, it can be hard to stop doomscrolling. That’s why both Apple and Google launched the first versions of their digital well-being features in 2018 to help us disconnect. Newer generations of software like iOS 18 and Android 16 have added more functionalities since the initial launch.
Here’s how to take advantage of the digital wellness settings on Apple and Android devices, including how to set up app timers, downtime and bedtime mode. For more, check out these essential iPhone and iPad parental controls.
Set up app timers on iPhone, iPad and Mac
You can set up app timers on your iPhone, iPad, and your Mac. By adding a timer to apps in your settings, you’re giving yourself an allotted amount of time on each app — once time is up, Apple will stop your scroll and alert you that it’s time to log off.
Before you begin, it’s important that you have screen time notifications allowed. Check this setting under Settings > Notifications > Screen Time and ensure you have enabled Allow Notifications and Time Sensitive Notifications.
Here’s how to create time limits for your apps on your iPhone, iPad and Mac:
Open your iPhone, iPad or Mac’s Settings and tap Screen Time.
Tap App Limits.
Tap Add Limit.
Select the individual or categories of apps you want to set timers for.
Tap Next in the upper right corner.
Scroll and set the amount of time you want to allow yourself on each app.
Tap Customize Days if you want to customize your limit’s schedule.
Tap Add in the upper right corner.
This is what it looks like when you are in an app when time is up (left) and the view from your home screen after (right).
Katelyn Chedraoui/CNET
Once you’re approaching your set time limit, Apple will send you a notification when you’ve got 5 minutes remaining. After you hit your limit, the app stops whatever it’s doing and presents you with a new screen that prompts you to tap OK to exit the app. If you’re doing something particularly urgent, you can tap Ignore Limit below. After you’ve hit your limit for the day, the app will appear grayed out on your home screen with an empty timer next to it.
Read More: This App Blocks Your Social Media Until You (Literally) Touch Grass
Set up downtime on iPhone, iPad and Mac
Another way to limit your screen time on Apple devices is to schedule downtime. Downtime is just what it sounds like — time to put down your device and do something else. This setting will alert you once your chosen rest period begins.
Here’s how to set up downtime:
Open your iPhone, iPad or Mac’s Settings and tap Screen Time.
Tap Downtime.
Toggle on the widget next to Scheduled.
Set your downtime schedule.
Set up app timers and bedtime mode on your Android phone now.
Screenshots by Moe Long
Set up app timers on Android phones and computers
If you have a Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy or another Android smartphone, you can set up time limits for each app as well. These settings give you the same options as Apple to set an allotment of time you can spend on each app. Here’s how to set them up.
Open your Android’s Settings.
Tap Digital wellbeing and parental controls.
Tap the screen time graph.
Find the app you want to set a limit for.
Tap the hourglass icon next to the app you want to set a limit for.
Set the amount of time you want to give yourself on each app.
Tap OK.
App timers on Android phones reset each day at midnight.
Set up bedtime mode on Android phones, tablets and Chromebooks
You can also limit your screen time by establishing a bedtime routine for your Android. This will alert you when it’s time to put your device down for the night according to your schedule. Here’s how to do this.
Open your Android’s Settings.
Tap Digital wellbeing and parental controls.
Tap Bedtime mode.
Tap Bedtime routine.
Choose whether to set a custom schedule or pick Turn on while charging, then select your desired time frame.
For more about digital well-being, check out one expert’s reasons to consider a social media detox and CNET’s picks for the best apps to help manage your screen time.
I’m Malcolm Scott, international economics editor in Sydney. Today, James Mayger, a trade reporter in Beijing, looks at China’s manufacturing dominance. Send us feedback and tips to ecodaily@bloomberg.net. And if you aren’t yet signed up to receive this newsletter, you can do so here.
There’s a rising drumbeat of complaints about China’s mighty export machine, with the US and others complaining that the flood of cheap Chinese exports is undercutting their own industries, and in some cases imposing tariffs to try to stem the tide.
LAKKI MARWAT (Dunya News) – Four children tragically drowned while bathing in a pond in the Daulat Khel area, according to Rescue 1222.
The deceased included two pair of brothers, all residents of Daulat Khel. Their bodies were recovered and shifted to the City Hospital.
Hospital officials confirmed that all four bodies had been brought in, adding that the children were aged between 9 and 12 years.
On June 27, at least 13 tourists drowned in the flooded River Swat after being caught in the gushing water while having breakfast on the riverbank, rescue officials confirmed.
Also last month, two women and as many children drowned after a boat carrying tourists capsized in the Shahi Bagh lake in Kalam area of Swat.
BRNO (Czechia) – The talking points have never stopped flowing since the FIBA U19 Women’s Basketball World Cup 2025 tipped off.
With two full days of games already banked, the teams have pushed the pause button ahead of finishing off group play on Tuesday July 15.
That means there is no better time to look back on what has happened so far in the competition, with 5 ups and 5 downs.
Let us know what you think and vote:
Who will be crowned U19 Women’s World Cup champions?
Let’s start with the downsides first and then soar to our super positive high fives.
Down #1
China have struggled without their superstar baller who has been promoted to FIBA Women’s Asia Cup 2025
China looking lost without Zhang Ziyu has made for tough viewing. It’s hard not to feel their pain. It’s such a struggle right now as they adjust to being without last year’s FIBA U18 Women’s Asia Cup MVP.
Their towering colossus was the heartbeat of their team last year and without her, they’re flat-lining. Losses to first-timers Nigeria and Portugal have hit hard.
However, at least the silver lining of this cloud is that the giant center has been promoted to senior action at the FIBA Women’s Asia Cup 2025. And her former U19WWC teammates are getting valuable experience in the meantime. China time will come. Maybe sooner than later.
Down #2
Are we in danger of ‘Death by Pick and Roll’? We love it as much as anybody, but so many teams on so many possessions are running little else. This is arguably at the expense of the kind of ball movement and shooting that is the main DNA of girls and women’s basketball.
Is the Pick and Roll being used too often by too many teams?
Over-dribbling from the guard running down the clock, everyone clearing out and waiting for that screen to come is becoming a cut and paste too often. Although when we are seeing it to initiate a drive and kick for a shooter it has looked good at times – or if executed the classic sense sparingly.
It would just be great if we could see even more dynamic and flexible play from some teams. Please?
Down #3
They say free-throws win games. Well right now, no fewer than five different teams are all shooting in the 50-56 percent range.
That’s going to hurt you down the tournament stretch if it doesn’t improve.
Down #4
Brazil have some athleticism, skills and a star baller in Ayla McDowell but have played a little out of control at times. Being so inefficient on the court has been costly and right now, their team efficiency rating is -32 and the worst in the competition.
Ayla McDowell has tried to inspire Brazil but they have found it tough against France and Australia
In mitigation they have had two tough games against France and Australia and you have to feel for them in this respect. Also with another potentially tough one ahead in the Round of 16. But as difficult as it is, you feel they have not played smart an their shot selection in particular has been disappointing.
Down #5
Blowouts keep happening – big blowouts which make it a tough watch at times. Although at least in the case of USA beating Korea, you had to admire their awesome play to get to their record-breaking tally of 134.
Read more about USA’s scoring record
USA break U19 Women’s World Cup record with 134 point haul
Up #5
Nigeria claimed their first ever win by beating China
Despite only two game days having been played, three nations have already made history with their first ever wins in the competition.
There have been unforgettable moments for Nigeria, Portugal and Israel, which were all special in their own way.
Nigeria flew the flag for Africa with Mali absent and were led by Nora Ezike in a dream debut for her country as they beat China. Portugal had the super Clara Silva to thank as they swept past China too, bouncing back from their first day humbling by Canada.
Meanwhile Israel showed great heart also, picking themselves up from a tough debut loss to Hungary as they edged out Korea off the back of 30 points from scoring ace Gal Raviv.
Read more about Portugal’s win and the reaction of star baller Clara Silva
Deja vu as Portugal write more basketball history in Brno
Read more about Israel’s win with reaction from Gal Raviv
Scoring machine Raviv takes Israel to historic first win
Read more about Nigeria’s historic day and the reaction of their star baller
Nigeria take historic first win as Nora Ezike erupts
Up #4
It might have been around 30c and sunny outside the Arena in Brno, but it has been raining from long-range inside with some brilliant three-point shooting displays from multiple teams across both game days.
Israel dropped 17 triples which was the second best in history, while Australia made 16 and that was their best ever tally.
Canada dropped 20 triples against Nigeria
But it was Canada who took the crown in this category with a historic showing as they became the first team in U19 history (women or men) to ever convert 20 triples in a game. Their shooting against Nigeria was just awesome.
Read more about Canada’s historic achievement
Canada go crazy from downtown to set all-time U19 triples record
Up #3
The host nation have created a super atmosphere for their games. Czechia fans in Brno were left celebrating their team getting a first win of this edition on the board as they blasted their way past Argentina.
Check out the pick of photos from host nation Czechia’s first victory at this edition
Check out the pick of photos from host nation Czechia’s first victory at this edition
Check out the pick of photos from host nation Czechia’s first victory at this edition
Check out the pick of photos from host nation Czechia’s first victory at this edition
Check out the pick of photos from host nation Czechia’s first victory at this edition
It’s always great for any tournament when the hosts are able to energize the competition.
Up #2
The commitment of Syla Swords to FIBA competitions and this U19 tournament in particular is incredible.
A Paris 2024 Olympian and someone who just days before the tournament was playing for the senior team and making the TISSOT All-Star Five at FIBA Women’s AmeriCup 2025, the guard insisted on still coming to play in Brno.
Swords has shown her dedication to competing with Canada at multiple FIBA events
Not only that, but she has worked tirelessly for her team and been so humble in everything she has done. Perhaps underlining just how important she is, Swords has played 44 minutes so far at the heart of the action and not turned the ball over one single time.
Classy, a leader and dedicated, she is an amazing young role model to follow.
Read more about a crazy 12 months for Swords
From Olympic lights to U19 fights: Syla Swords’ wild ride
Up #1
MVP frontrunner Sienna Betts of USA has had two great games so far
Many of the biggest prospects have lived up to their billing so far, while others are looking like they are ready to click through the gears in pursuit of success. Having the biggest rising stars performing at the highest level makes for a great tournament and increases the appetite and anticipation for what still lies in wait.
Many of the Top 10 prospects such as Sienna Betts, Gal Raviv, Syla Swords, Clara Silva, Nell Angloma and Jerzy Robinson have all excelled so far and it also makes it an exciting TISSOT All-Star Five and TISSOT MVP race too.
The puzzle seems impossible: take a three-billion-letter code and predict what happens if you swap a single letter. The code we’re talking about—the human genome—stores most of its instructions in genetic “dark matter,” the 98 percent of DNA that doesn’t make proteins. AlphaGenome, an artificial intelligence system just released by Google DeepMind in London, aims to show how even tiny changes in those noncoding sections affect gene expression.
DeepMind’s newly released technology could transform how we treat genetic diseases. Though scientists long dismissed noncoding DNA as “junk,” we now know this so-called dark matter controls when and how genes turn on or off. AlphaGenome shows promise in predicting how mutations in these regions cause diseases—from certain cancers to rare disorders where crucial proteins never get made. By revealing these hidden control switches, AlphaGenome could help researchers design therapies that target genetic conditions, potentially aiding millions of people.
But to understand the complexity of the task for which AlphaGenome was created, one must consider how the definition of a “gene” has evolved. The term, coined in 1909 to describe invisible units of heredity (as proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1865) initially carried no molecular baggage. But by the 1940s, the “one gene, one enzyme” idea took hold. And by the 1960s, textbooks taught that for a stretch of DNA to be properly called a gene, it had to code for a specific protein.
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Over the past two decades, the definition has broadened with the discoveries of genes that code for the numerous types of RNAs that don’t get translated into proteins. Today a gene is considered to be any DNA segment whose RNA or protein product performs a biological function. This conceptual shift underscores the genome’s real estate map: Only about 1 to 2 percent of human DNA directly codes for proteins. But with the broader definition, roughly 40 percent is gene territory.
What remains unaccounted for is significant: more than a billion units of code that can determine how and how often genes get activated. Because relevant clues lie far apart and play out through complex cycles of gene regulation, decoding them has been among biology’s hardest challenges. AlphaGenome’s goal is to understand how these regions affect gene expression—and how even tiny changes can tilt the entire body’s balance between health and disease. To do so, the AI system uses a DNA sequence with a length of up to one million letters as input—and “predicts thousands of molecular properties characterising its regulatory activity,” according to a statement issued by DeepMind.
Already, AlphaGenome has replicated results from genetics labs. In a June 2025 preprint study (which has yet to be peer-reviewed), AlphaGenome’s team described using the model to run a simulation that mirrored known DNA interactions: mutations that act like rogue light switches by cranking a gene into overdrive in a certain type of leukemia. When AlphaGenome simulated interactions on a stretch of DNA containing both the gene and the mutation, it predicted the same complex chain of events that were already observed in lab experiments.
Though AlphaGenome is currently available only for noncommercial testing, responses in the scientific community have been enthusiastic so far, with both biotech start-ups and university researchers publicly expressing excitement about the system’s potential to accelerate research.
Limits remain. AlphaGenome struggles to capture interactions that are more than 100,000 DNA letters away, can miss some tissue-specific nuances and is not designed to predict traits from a complete personal genome. Complex diseases that depend on development or environment also lie outside its direct scope. The system does suggest wide-ranging uses, however: By tracing how minute changes ripple through gene regulation, it could pinpoint the roots of genetic disorders. It could help in the design of synthetic DNA. And above all, it could offer a faster way to chart the genome’s complex regulatory circuitry.
