AI creates viruses that don’t exist in nature
Scientists in the US have used artificial intelligence to design and create viruses that do not exist in nature, in what researchers say is a major step forward for synthetic biology.Researchers at Stanford University and the Arc Institute used a generative AI model called Evo to write new viral genomes. They then synthesised the DNA in a lab and found that 16 of the AI-designed viruses were able to replicate and kill E. coli.The findings were published on Thursday in the journal Science.The viruses were bacteriophages, or phages — viruses that infect bacteria but not humans. The researchers c