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AI used to design brand new viruses not found in nature (news.stanford.edu)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Experts Reaction.

  • Bacteriophages kill bacteria, and scientists hope engineered phages could work as new antibiotics.
  • Researchers applied a generative AI model, called Evo 2, to this challenge. Given a starting place – in this case bacteriophage ΦX174 – Evo 2 suggested new DNA sequences.
  • Based on genomes written by Evo 2, the researchers synthesized and tested nearly 300 phages for effectiveness against E. coli. They ended up with 16 that proved exceptional.
  • Given its potential, the researchers have made Evo 2 openly and freely available. Acknowledging safety concerns, they point to the importance of having tools like Evo 2 to address existing natural pathogens and the ability to build safety checks into AI tools – something that doesn’t happen when pathogens evolve naturally.
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[–] 1 point 3 months ago

I agree with the point you are making, that this study shows that there is a risk of people using these systems to generate biological weapons.

However, in this particular study, they created bacteriophages. Those are viruses that attack bacteria, and the focus of that research is usually around creating antibiotic treatments (fight bacterial infections with viruses that kill them). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage

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