Biology

2871 readers

1 users here now

This is a general community to discuss of all things related to biology!

For a more specific community about asking questions to biologists, you can also visit:

/c/askbiologists@lemmy.world

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

Sal@mander.xyz

Generative design of novel bacteriophages with genome language models (www.biorxiv.org)

submitted 2 weeks ago by crt0o@discuss.tchncs.de to c/biology@mander.xyz

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Bonkers preprint, the guys generated phage genomes with AI, synthesized them, and some were actually functional viruses capable of infecting E. coli.

top 4 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

What's the worst that could happen

[–] plyth@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

This is fascinating and frightening. It's only a matter of time until there is the next lockdown.

[–] crt0o@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 weeks ago

Well the models were trained on bacteriophages, so it's pretty much impossible that the viruses could be human pathogens, still scary af though lol

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Bird flu is still out there too, and it seems likely that by the time it figures out humans, the US public health apparatus will be basically destroyed.

Ever lived through a plague in the middle ages? Would you like to?