Novel Viruses Designed by Artificial Intelligence

Sometimes the news sounds a bit like a science fiction novel, doesn't it? Science often does, and maybe more so these days. A recent New York Times article, "This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature" described how scientists at Stanford University, and the Arc Institute, trained Evo, an artificial intelligence model, to design possibly novel viruses. Evo was given over 9 trillion nucleotide sequences to learn nature's 'grammatical rules of life'. After the training, Evo designed 700,000 new versions of the original virus which were then examined by the scientists. The most promising sequences were synthesized and the resulting DNA molecules were inserted into bacteria. Sixteen of these viruses were viable, as demonstrated by their ability to infect other bacteria. The full scientific study can be found in the journal Science: "Generative design of bacteriophages with genome language models".

The NYT article is quick to point out that the designed viruses are similar to a naturally occurring virus that only infects bacteria, Phi X-174, and therefore are not dangerous to humans. Yet the work shows what is possible--and raises the question of  how hard would it be to make variants of a virus that does infect humans? 

Dr. Moritz Hanke, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who was not involved with the study, points out that the National Institutes of Health recently released a new policy prohibiting experiments that would make biological agents more harmful. But computer-based research is not prohibited unless it involves an "entity of concern". As Dr. Hanke points out, how do you know if a novel virus is an entity of concern? 

Is this approach simply a rapid version of what evolution does anyway, and not all that different from directed evolution and rational engineering, two approaches that have been used to design proteins of interest? Or is it a step beyond--one that needs stronger guardrails than what are currently in place? Science fiction, or just science now?  We live in interesting times.

Image

Wild-type virus with residues color coded

Image Credit: Sandra Porter using Molecule World.

References:

• Carl Zimmer. New York Times. This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature.
• Samuel H. King et al. Generative design of bacteriophages with genome language models.Science 393, eaec2657(2026).DOI:10.1126/science.aec2657.