In a development that represents a quantum leap in the history of biological sciences, researchers have succeeded for the first time in employing artificial intelligence to design and manufacture a fully functional virus within the laboratory.
This bold scientific breakthrough is not just a technological achievement, but it signals the beginning of a new era in which new living species can be created, and the course of biological evolution can be directed, thus challenging the natural evolutionary path that life has followed for four billion years.
NEW: Biologists have used artificial intelligence to design the complete genetic blueprint of a virus that destroys a killer bacterium, marking a major breakthrough in synthetic biology.
The AI created virus, named Evo-Φ2147, was brought to life in the lab and successfully… pic.twitter.com/rWTiyKSyZp
A team from Stanford University in California developed a specialized artificial intelligence program called Evo2, which was able to design 285 virtual viruses. Among these designs, an experimental virus, codenamed Evo-Φ2147, was created and put into practical testing.
The manufactured virus was placed in laboratory dishes containing colonies of the deadly E. coli bacteria. Sixteen out of 285 viruses showed an effective ability to attack and eliminate these bacteria. Indeed, a mixture of these sixteen strains was able to defeat even the most antibiotic-resistant forms of bacteria.
Adrian Wolfson, a prominent British molecular biologist, explains the importance of this achievement by saying that it is a "huge and fateful moment," noting that natural evolution was a random, unplanned process over billions of years, but today we can begin the "process of creating life," albeit in a primitive form at its current stage.
Technically speaking, the engineered virus is not a fully independent life form; it contains only 11 genes (compared to 20,000 in humans) and cannot replicate outside of a host. However, the true value of this achievement lies in demonstrating that designing the complete genome of organisms is now possible through artificial intelligence.
The genome is the complete genetic code that determines all of an organism's traits and functions.
This progress coincides with another scientific breakthrough: the development of a new DNA-building tool called Sidewinder, which was revealed in the prestigious journal Nature. This tool is capable of building long gene sequences with 100,000 times greater accuracy than previous technologies, opening up unprecedented possibilities in genetic engineering.
Experts agree that advanced artificial intelligence technologies, coupled with precise gene-editing tools, will revolutionize multiple fields, including modern medicine, materials science, and even the course of biological evolution itself. From a medical perspective, if these technologies had been available during the COVID-19 pandemic, the first mRNA vaccine could have been developed in just 62 hours instead of 42 days. Scientists also anticipate the possibility of using these technologies to revive extinct species or even create entirely new ones.
But this remarkable scientific progress is not without profound ethical and security concerns. The ability to design viruses and other living organisms in the laboratory raises critical questions about the limits of scientific intervention and the necessity of strict ethical guidelines.
Wolfson emphasizes that the international scientific community and society as a whole are required to open a serious dialogue about "who will draw the boundaries, who will set the rules, and how we will control this new scientific power" before technologies advance too far.
