Category: Technology | Published: 2025-10-03
The Research
This month (September 2025), a team led by Brian Hie at Stanford and the Arc Institute revealed that generative AI models can now design entire genome-scale viruses that work in practice. These were not simulations or theoretical sequences. The viruses were tested and validated in a lab, and in some cases outperformed their natural equivalents.
Synthetic Versions Created
The AI-created viruses were synthetic versions of ΦX174, a bacteriophage that infects E. coli. Using large language models trained on genetic data, the team designed dozens of new variants. Lab tests showed many of these were viable and highly infectious against bacterial hosts.
In three separate experiments, the synthetic phages (viruses that infect and kill bacteria) infected and killed bacteria more effectively than natural ΦX174. The researchers reported that, in one case, the natural version didn’t even make the top five.