Researchers produced 16 functional pathogens as experts warn the same technology could eventually pose serious biosecurity risks
US scientists have used artificial intelligence (AI) to create functional viruses that do not exist in nature for the first time, demonstrating a capability that researchers say could advance medicine but also pose serious biosecurity risks.
Researchers at Stanford University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard used AI to design thousands of complete viral genomes, according to a study published in Science on Thursday.
Nearly 300 of the designs were chemically synthesized and tested in laboratories, producing 16 viable viruses.
The viruses were bacteriophages – organisms that infect bacteria rather than humans – and were based on a naturally occurring phage known as ΦX174. Some of the AI-designed versions proved more effective than natural phages at killing strains of E. coli that had developed resistance.
AI had previously been used extensively to design individual genes and proteins, but the researchers said this was the first demonstration that generative models could design an entire functional viral genome.
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