Scientists from Stanford University and the Arc Institute have made a breakthrough in biotechnology, published in the journal Science: an artificial intelligence model developed viable viruses «from scratch.» Based on the generated DNA sequences, the researchers chemically synthesized the organisms and confirmed that 16 of them were fully functional.
Scientists from Stanford University and the Arc Institute have made a breakthrough in biotechnology, published in the journal Science: an artificial intelligence model developed viable viruses «from scratch.» Based on the generated DNA sequences, the researchers chemically synthesized the organisms and confirmed that 16 of them were fully functional.
For the experiment, the scientists created and trained a genomic artificial intelligence model called Evo, according to The New York Times. The models were given more than 9 trillion nucleotides — the molecular «building blocks» of DNA — to analyze, assembled from more than 128,000 genetic sequences from millions of animals, plants, microorganisms and viruses.
By analogy with language models (such as ChatGPT) that study the rules of sentence construction, Evo has studied the statistical patterns of the living world and understood the principles by which nucleotides form functional genes.
To test the algorithm, they chose the bacteriophage Phi X-174, a simple virus that has been studied for over a century and that only infects E. coli bacteria. After learning from the genome of Phi X-174 and 15,000 of its closest «relatives,» the AI suggested 700,000 potential new genomes. The scientists selected 285 variants and synthesized them in the laboratory. As a result, 16 viruses came to life, began to successfully attack bacteria and multiply.
The viruses created by artificial intelligence are phages — they are safe for humans and only kill bacteria. In laboratory tests, scientists have grown strains of E. coli that are resistant to the natural virus Phi X-174. However, a «cocktail» of new, AI-developed phages was able to overcome this antibiotic-resistant defense and destroy all resistant strains of bacteria. This opens up huge prospects for medicine in the fight against bacteria that do not respond to conventional drugs.
Despite the success, the scientific community warns: AI development technologies are significantly ahead of safety standards and legislative restrictions.
The authors of the study emphasize that they deliberately did not add data on pathogens dangerous to humans to the AI training sample, and the viruses themselves are harmless to humans. However, the experiment proved the potential for creating combat or extremely dangerous biological agents using available AI models if they fall into the wrong hands.
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