Scientists use AI to design viruses to kill hardy bacteria
What Happened
Scientists have used AI to design entire genomes for bacteriophages, viruses that infect and kill bacteria. These phages were different from any found in nature, and could together successfully kill bacteria known to resist natural viruses. The work offers a path to create treatments to fight drug-resistant bacteria. Cepaea nemoralis snails produce five types of mucus for different tasks, such as crawling, sticking to surfaces, and defence, ‘tuning’ the properties using calcium. Most animal mucus is slippery but snail mucus is versatile. Scientists found that it contains collagen VI as the building block, with the snails secreting calcium carbonate granules to adjust thickness and stickiness. This simple adjustment creates anything from a lubricant to a protective barrier, and could inspire new materials in medicine.
Using ‘genome language models’, they generated thousands of new DNA sequences, then used them with a well-studied virus called ΦX174 as a template to yield 16 functional viruses.
