Its not often we bring you unabashed good news, gentle readers. Nor moreover, blow our own trumpet. But the following from Nature Briefing AI Helps design E. coli killing viruses not only unites so many of the themes we push here-(AI molecular design, multidisciplinary studies, bacteriophages etc etc)-that we think that the advance it represents it makes this one of our more significant blogs in months.
Using artificial intelligence (AI), researchers have designed novel viruses capable of killing strains of Escherichia coli. The team used the DNA of a simple bacteriophage called ΦX174 to guide AI models to generate viral genomes with the specific function of infecting antibiotic-resistant strains of E. coli. Researchers used the model’s suggested sequences to select 302 viable phages. When put to the test, 16 of these phages could infect E. coli, and combinations of them could kill three strains of the bacterium, a feat the original ΦX174 couldn’t pull off.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
its certainly worth clicking on the Nature article and even the Preprint, which has a surprisingly well written summary
Old hands to this blog will recall our long standing worries about this organism. Normally Escherichia coli (named after the ingenious Dr Theodor Escherich) is a fine upstanding member of the microbiological community, being common in nature and a doyenne of experimental departments in microbiological schools. But certain strains of it are developing a profound resistance to our best antibiotics including piperacillin/tazobactam combinations. Which could have made it a very False Friend indeed. But now it seems that Dr King and his team have got ahead of the game.
Note the careful language, full admissions that peer review awaits, and generally understated claims that mark the true signs of trustworthy scholarship. How different from some situations where leaders of great nations go before the cameras and make huge unsubstantiated claims about phenomena of which they have no certain knowledge, But when you choose to believe only what you want to believe, fate has a nasty way of catching up eventually. Wait for the next blog and we’ll tell you more .
#E.coli #bacteriophages #AI #designer biochemistry #antibiotic resistance #microbiology #medicine #health
Learning, Science and Society 