The world’s first AI-generated genome has been created by scientists from Stanford and the Arc Institute. The first entirely AI-generated genome sequence highlights the importance of Artificial intelligence in biology. The virus is capable of infecting and even killing bacteria.
Earlier, AI was used to create a particular protein sequence or a small multi-gene system. But creating an entire sequence was considered difficult, as it involves creating a genome with many interacting genes. The breakthrough experiment was conducted using a virus named bacteriophage ΦX174. The same virus became the first one to have the first fully sequenced genome in 1977, and also the first one to be synthesised from scratch in 2003. It has now become the first-ever AI-generated genome.
A genomic language model named Evo was used by scientists for AI training, and thousands of prompts were used to generate the candidate genomes. After following a series of rigorous quality checks and lab tests, a custom software was created to make sure that the proteins to infect E. coli were present in each genome. The genomes were then synthesised inside the laboratory and inserted into the host bacteria to see the results.
The experiment led to the creation of 16 functional viruses with mutations not seen before. A particular design was shown to have borrowed a DNA-packaging protein from another relative, an experiment which has been tried and failed earlier. The EVO model was used on 2M viruses, and was later asked to create new ones.
The most surprising and important result of the experiment was the 392 new mutations that were never seen in nature before. This ensured that when a bacteria became resistant to a particular virus occurring in nature, the ones designed by Artificial Intelligence passed the defence when the natural ones failed.
This is a historic achievement in biotechnology, as it can have multiple positive uses in treating chronic diseases in future. The experiment shows the importance of AI in science and the vividness and knowledge of it.
