Archive · 7 Aug 2026
AI-Designed Viruses Created From Scratch for the First Time
Scientists did something brand new: they used artificial intelligence, or AI, to design completely new viruses.
A virus is a tiny germ that can sometimes make living things sick.
These new viruses are special because they only attack bacteria, which are very small living things.
Viruses that infect bacteria are called bacteriophages.
To make them, the scientists taught a computer program by showing it millions of real virus instruction books, called genomes.
The computer then invented about 300 new virus designs.
The scientists built the DNA of those designs in a laboratory.
Out of all the designs, 16 viruses worked perfectly and could infect bacteria.
This is the first time fully working viruses have been made from scratch using AI.
The scientists published their discovery in a famous science journal called Science.
For the first time, scientists used artificial intelligence to design fully functional viruses from scratch.
The study, published in the journal Science, produced 16 new viruses capable of infecting bacteria.
The viruses, called bacteriophages, were designed with generative AI models trained on millions of natural genomes.
Researchers selected around 300 AI-generated genomes and chemically synthesised their DNA in the laboratory.
The genome language model works in a way similar to large language models such as the one used in ChatGPT.
- Who
- Scientists and researchers behind the study published in the journal Science.
- What
- Used generative AI to design and create 16 fully functional new viruses, called bacteriophages, that infect bacteria.
- When
- The study was published on a Friday; the exact date is not specified in the articles.
- Where
- The research location is not specified; the findings were published in the journal Science.
- Why
- To demonstrate that AI trained on natural genomes can design functional viruses, advancing the field of synthetic biology.
- Journal
- Science
- Study title
- Generative Design of Bacteriophages with Genome Language Models
- Functional viruses created
- 16
- Type of virus
- Bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria)
- AI method
- Generative genome language models trained on millions of natural genomes
- Genomes chemically synthesised
- Around 300
- AI comparison
- Works similarly to large language models such as ChatGPT