Meanwhile, in a US biology lab…
AI used to create viruses not found in nature for first time
US researchers used AI to design 16 viruses that have never existed in nature, then built them and confirmed they work — bacteriophages, in this case, which infect bacteria and not us. It is the first time generative models have produced functioning genomes from scratch, which opens a door to designer therapies and, unavoidably, to designer pathogens.
Why this made the cut
- a genuine first in synthetic biology
- the same result is both the promise and the risk