Scientists use AI to create a virus never seen before

"The AI tool Evo2 is much like the large language model chatbots ChatGPT and Grok, except that it has been trained on genetic codes rather than written text. Evo2 was trained on nine trillion 'base pairs' - the individual As, Cs, Ts, and Gs that are the basic materials of DNA - to teach it how genes are put together. This allows Evo2 to create entirely new codes for organisms that have never existed, specifically shaped to fit their designer's requirements."

"With just 11 genes, compared to the 200,000 in the human genome, this virus is among the simplest forms of life. However, scientists believe that the same tools could one day create entire living organisms or resurrect long-extinct species. This artificial virus was specifically created to kill infectious and potentially deadly E. Coli bacteria. Based on a wild virus known to infect bacteria, scientists used an AI tool called Evo2 to create 285 entirely new viruses from scratch."

"Dr Woolfson believes that the revolution in artificial organisms is now poised to carry us into a 'post-Darwinian' world, in which humans rather than natural selection shapes the evolution of species. This has been made possible by the simultaneous development of two technologies: AI that can write genetic code, and new tools for assembling genes in the lab. The AI tool Evo2 is much like the large language model chatbots ChatGPT and Grok, except that it has been trained on genetic codes rather than written text."

Genyro, a startup led by Dr Adrian Woolfson, used AI to design a novel virus named Evo-Φ2147 with just 11 genes. The team used an AI model called Evo2, trained on nine trillion base pairs, together with new gene-assembly tools to create 285 entirely new viruses from a bacterial virus template. Sixteen designed variants could infect E. Coli, and the most effective killed bacteria 25% faster than wild-type viruses. The approach could enable creation of whole organisms or resurrection of extinct species, while prior research warns that AI-designed pathogens could pose new biosecurity risks.

Read at Mail Online