An international team including researchers from Nvidia and Microsoft has used AI on a biological trove of more than a million species to generate potential new gene editing and drug therapies to combat deadly diseases.
The AI models, known as Eden, use evolutionary information from mainly microbe specimens compiled globally by the UK company Basecamp Research that have never before appeared in public databases.
The initiative is a milestone in increasing efforts to use AI to learn from evolution about the nature and origin of diseases. Researchers have been trying to overcome data shortages and technical limitations that have held back the development of gene therapies.