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Scientists built 16 AI-designed viruses
The work appeared in the journal Science. The team used a genomic language model, which learns from the four nucleotides, A, G, C, and T, the way a chatbot learns from words. The model is Evo 2, and for this project it was trained on a couple million bacteriophage genomes. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect only bacteria.
The model designed bacteriophage genomes, and scientists then did the synthesizing in a lab. Some of the designs produced new variants of viruses, a first for AI-designed genomes. The viruses targeted E. coli, and the work is aimed at drug-resistant bacteria that antibiotics cannot kill.
The paper drew coverage from the New York Times and Wire.
How does a phage infect a bacterium?
A phage first attaches to specific receptor proteins on the surface of a bacterial cell. Many phages, including the classic E. coli virus T4, then inject their DNA through a tail that works like a syringe. Inside, the viral genome takes over the cell's machinery to build new phage particles, and the cell bursts open to release them. A single infected cell can release on the order of a hundred new phages.
Why can a language model write DNA?
Genomes follow patterns much like sentences do. Protein-coding genes are read in three-letter units called codons, so a model that predicts the next letter well has to learn which stretches of sequence make working proteins. Evo 2 learned these patterns from genomes across many kinds of organisms before being tuned for this project. The Arc Institute described Evo 2 in early 2025 as able to take in up to a million nucleotides at once.
Why use viruses against drug-resistant bacteria?
Phages kill bacteria by a different route than antibiotics do, so a bacterium's resistance to a drug does not protect it from the phage. Each phage also recognizes only particular bacterial strains, which leaves most other microbes alone. The idea is old: Félix d'Hérelle named bacteriophages in the 1910s, and phage therapy was used in Soviet Georgia for decades. The Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, founded in 1923, still studies it.
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