Scientists Use Meta AI to Discover 70K New Viruses
Researchers out of China, Hong Kong, and Australia used US-headquartered tech giant Meta's artificial intelligence to discover 162K RNA viruses, 70.5K of which were never before discovered.
Facts
- Researchers out of China, Hong Kong, and Australia used US-headquartered tech giant Meta's artificial intelligence to discover 162K RNA viruses, 70.5K of which were never before discovered.[1][2]
- Scientists Eddie Holmes of Australia and Mang Shi of China worked with Chinese tech company Alibaba to develop an AI model called LucaProt, which allowed them to sequence virus genomes throughout the environment.[1][3][4]
- They fed viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerases (RdRps) — which are key pieces of a genome — as well as Meta's ESMFold protein-prediction data, through LucaProt to detect viruses in some of the most extreme places, such as hot springs and salt lakes.[1][4]
- Despite the fact that RNA genomes change rapidly and it's difficult to identify which ones are connected to which viruses, Holmes said they "trained this AI method to recognize the structure of every RNA polymerase known."[4]
- Besides the new viruses, the technology was able to detect well-known viruses, some of which are harmless to humans while others are dangerous, including HIV and Ebola.[2]
- The researchers said their next goal is to identify the hosts of these new viruses and whether or not they're capable of infecting archaea, which have been associated with diseases including periodontitis, endodontic infections, and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.[1][5]
Sources: [1]Nature, [2]YouTube, [3]Alizila, [4]Fierce Biotech and [5]Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal.
Narratives
- Narrative A, as provided by YouTube and South China Morning Post. AI is completely revolutionizing medical research and healthcare for the better. Between this new technology of discovering unknown viruses and other AI models that identify diseases from patient histories and biobanks, these machines will be able to diagnose human conditions at blazing speed.
- Narrative B, as provided by Writing Mate. While AI will undoubtedly become a major tool in the medical field, it can't replace the human aspect of the healthcare industry. Even medical coders, whose job it is to develop patient record analysis technology, will always be necessary to carry out human-focused care.
