Researchers at Stanford University and the Arc Institute used artificial intelligence to write complete viral genomes that had never existed in nature, built them in a laboratory, and found that 16 produced functioning viruses capable of infecting and killing E. coli bacteria.
The work, published in Science on Aug. 6, is the first demonstration of generative AI designing complete functional viral genomes. It was led by Brian Hie, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Stanford and an innovation investigator at the Arc Institute, with Stanford bioengineering graduate student Samuel King.
