Scientists have designed a functioning virus from scratch using AI – what you need to know

By Chloe James, Professor of Microbiology, University of Salford
Martha Clokie, Professor of Microbiology, University of Leicester

Artificial intelligence has designed viruses that can infect bacteria and reproduce – a first that shows AI is beginning to do more than analyse the genetic code of living things. It can write new versions of it, too.

The viruses in question are bacteriophages, or phages – viruses that infect bacteria rather than people, animals or plants. Researchers used AI to design hundreds of new versions of a well-studied phage, then built the viruses from scratch in the laboratory.

Of 285 AI-designed…

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