{"id":131985,"date":"2026-08-06T19:09:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T19:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/131985\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T19:09:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T19:09:15","slug":"ai-program-designs-new-bacteriophages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/131985\/","title":{"rendered":"AI program designs new bacteriophages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Researchers at Stanford University have shown that entire genome bacteriophages can be generated with an AI-guided program.<\/p>\n

The team used programs Evo1 and Evo2 to generate new bacteriophages<\/a> based on the \u03a6X174 family of phages, which target Escherichia coli<\/a> (Science 2026, DOI 10.1126\/science.aec2657).<\/p>\n

The models were trained on large swaths of existing genomes, and then they were prompted with the help of a consensus sequence that was present in every \u03a6X174 phage present in the training data.<\/p>\n

The large amounts of training data provide insight for the models into what sequences have been evolutionarily conserved, which guides the design toward a genome that produces a viable phage. There are many possible combinations of nucleotides that could make up a gene or a genome, says Brian Hie<\/a>, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Stanford and the senior author on the paper. \u201cBut only a much smaller subset of those sequences are biologically plausible or fit into the biological world.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the researchers got usable sequences, they could then order and insert them into E. coli bacteria. The program produced 16 viable, novel phages in total.<\/p>\n

The work acts as \u201ca proof of concept of what\u2019s possible for genome design guided by AI,\u201d says Samuel King<\/a>, a postdoctoral researcher in Hie\u2019s lab.<\/p>\n

The group intends to continue developing the phage program. Hie says that the program\u2019s ability to incorporate evolutionary diversity could make phage therapy<\/a> more effective as an alternative to antibiotics, in the case of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Researchers at Stanford University have shown that entire genome bacteriophages can be generated with an AI-guided program.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,65813,357,65814,358,12152],"class_list":["post-131985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-bacteriophages","tag-genome","tag-genome-design","tag-genomics","tag-stanford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}