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but they are not aimed at killing mammals or people, but bacteria.

AI-created bacteriophage overcame resistant bacterial strains, but experts emphasize need for safeguards

  researchers from Stanford University and the Broad Institute report that the functional bacteriophages they created using artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly destroyed strains of Escherichia coli that had evolved resistance to naturally occurring phages, but experts call for safeguards to prevent the technology from being used for harm.

 

Bacteriophages are ubiquitous viruses that target, infect, and kill only bacteria. They are found everywhere bacteria live, including the environment and the human gut, and they can be used to treat bacterial infections.

 

Using the ΦX174 bacteriophage as a model, the team combined their previously built genomic language models with computational biology to produce 16 complete bacteriophages with substantially different genomes.

 

“Even the simplest genomes are highly complex and can be rendered nonviable by a single mutation,” the authors wrote. “Design at the scale of whole genomes has remained largely beyond reach.” Urgent biosafety, biosecurity questions Some engineered phages performed comparably to naturally occurring relatives, and some combinations overcame two strains of E coli resistant to ΦX174-like phages.