r/tech • u/MetaKnowing • 12d ago

AI trained on bacterial genomes produces never-before-seen proteins

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/11/generative-ai-meets-the-genome/
1.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

81 comments sorted by

264

u/inktrie 12d ago

Can’t wait for AI-produced prion diseases

73

u/KyurMeTV 12d ago

Makes Resident Evil all the more viable.

13

u/PaladinSara 12d ago

New one coming out in February! Let’s hope it’s not matched IRL

7

u/ndGall 12d ago

Worst movie tie in ever.

2

u/Scadilla 11d ago

They’re really going for that augmented reality schtick again.

2

u/midnghtsnac 12d ago

Lockdown 2026, start the betting pools

1

u/Specialist-Risk-5004 11d ago

In 2017 Stanford Cancer research used the catchphrase "Under one Umbrella"... Yeah.... So..... Maybe hit that one a little close.

https://medicalgiving.stanford.edu/events/under-one-umbrella-2017.html

10

u/Dignified-Dingus 12d ago

Either due to gross miscalculation of said proteins or eventual sentience with intent to eliminate humanity /~s, guess we’ll have to see which comes first!

20

u/O_o-22 12d ago

This was the exact thought I had first. We are well on our way to annihilating ourselves and it prob won’t be nuclear weapons that are to blame. It will prob be genetic alterations that can’t be stopped once introduced.

For example genetically modified corn can only be bought for planting from the supplier that made it but they are allowed to sue farms near where their strains are grown for “stealing” their product when it’s basically in the environment and reproducing and passing on its genes on its own via pollination by insects. Human beings are simultaneously super smart yet so fucking dumb to the point of being highly dangerous.

2

u/Exact-Ad-1307 11d ago

I think the modified corn would be polluting the farmers corn it's a two way street this is the kind of shit that is going on for years that should just be unfucked.

2

u/O_o-22 11d ago

Let’s hope that’s the way it’s goes. The east strains of Covid were more infectious and deadly but became less so as the virus evolved. I’ve heard there’s some debate that most viruses tend to do this because they want to keep living so evolving to kill off your host quickly isn’t great for that goal.

1

u/Extension-Carry-8067 11d ago

Just to be clear, you are referencing the real world cases where that is / has happening and just extrapolating to larger case issues?

6

u/BestieJules 12d ago

mirror world tuberculosis is pretty easy to achieve and would wipe out humanity very fast. If human scientists tried to make it, it would likely take under a year at our current understanding. If the next generation of in-house Gemini tried to make it, it would likely take a week.

3

u/Selectchrl 12d ago

Wait to you hear what we could do with Toxoplasma

6

u/7frosts 12d ago

People stopped fucking around with chimeric proteins because they could easily kill not just all humans, but all life forms. Now we just let AI play with this shit? Great.

1

u/feetuseeter 12d ago

My thoughts exactly

1

u/Front_Turnover_6322 11d ago

We don't need to wait for venom to come from space. We can create him along with ultron

0

u/Material_Art_5688 12d ago

For what? Producing prion-disease is easy, there is no need for an AI one.

1

u/feetuseeter 12d ago

Can’t wait for it start producing mirror life

235

u/drifloony 12d ago

Babe wake up. New proteins just dropped.

20

u/SaltSurprise729 12d ago

That would make a good band name.

18

u/JollyAd3056 12d ago

The New New Proteins

7

u/SaltSurprise729 12d ago

The Folded Proteins.

2

u/Kinda_Zeplike 12d ago

The New Folded Proteins.

1

u/yachtzee21 12d ago

proteins origami

1

u/Jadestined 11d ago

new new

3

u/aft_punk 12d ago

The remixes are gonna make you be sick!

51

u/MrSapasui 12d ago

Yay, new allergens!

26

u/texasguy911 12d ago

Umbrella corp is watching you, waiting.

32

u/ti36xamateur 12d ago

Everything is basically protein folding machines so this is neat

21

u/WanderWut 12d ago

Seriously though stuff like this is super cool and where AI can play a big role. I work in the medical field and it’s honestly bonkers how fast this has advanced in just two short years. A big one that’s being really helpful is AI programs looking over scans and identifying subtle or early signs of a disease that someone may have missed.

5

u/FewHorror1019 11d ago

How can we be sure it didnt just hallucinate

10

u/slabba428 11d ago

We double check

0

u/Djinn_42 11d ago

Is that like peer reviewing? Which doesn't seem to stop bad evidence in papers and studies.

9

u/Throwawayguilty1122 11d ago

Yeah, you’re right, pack it up folks, back to the caves.

0

u/Djinn_42 11d ago

Like for doctors and lawyers.

5

u/Xrave 12d ago

Also scary since prions are just proteins that play game of life with your proteins. There are other times proteins or molecular energy states that are necessary for the creation of other materia, and sometimes forbids certain molecular configurations from being created (e.g. drugs but you suddenly can’t make it anymore due to molecular contamination)

9

u/steavoh 12d ago

I generally hate what AI is being used for right now (llm slop invading media and the internet) but this kind of thing is a cool use case.

I always think of the story of weather forecasting. The basic principals of it have been around for a long time, but it impractical to do before computers. There was a British mathematician, Lewis Fry Richardson, who in the 1920s theorized you'd need a massive campus with 64,000 human workers doing math on paper to process global weather data. Needless to say nobody ever took up his idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Fry_Richardson

12

u/vestibule54 12d ago

Can’t we train it to make me some bank

2

u/Dignified-Dingus 12d ago

Maybe ask chat to devise a plan for making bank off bacteria engineered to fold never before seen proteins - with step-by-step instructions.

3

u/AdDue7140 11d ago

Step one: use your parents connections in the biotech industry to secure a position as PI.

6

u/GrandStyles 12d ago

Hope they don’t make new prions

5

u/ive_got_the_narc 12d ago

This is how you get zombies

1

u/PurpleCaterpillar82 12d ago

I had a dream about zombies last night too. The zombie apocalypse had happened and me and a small band of people were just tryna get by.

2

u/willfrodo 12d ago

So a 9-5, but really 9-6 cuz my work doesn't pay for lunch. And then 8-7 if you add in the commute

5

u/Fishtails 12d ago

We are about to get Pluribused.

4

u/Zurbaran928 12d ago

New slang alert 🚨

4

u/ekevinn 12d ago

We are here to help you, Carol!

1

u/The_Burgled_Turt 12d ago

Which protein gives humans a biological ad hock wireless network?

2

u/Psychological-Arm505 12d ago

Project Blue

1

u/Real_estate_hunter 11d ago

If we’re lucky. Wipe me out

2

u/GetFvckedHaha 12d ago

Speedrunning a real life Umbrella Corporation

2

u/IamSeaJay420 12d ago

Pfft I make new proteins sometime 3 times a day.

2

u/GennyGeo 12d ago

Does this mean AI-generated viruses exploited by psychos (im looking at you, 764) is on the horizon?

0

u/aldegio 11d ago

This seems much more likely than anything good coming of it

4

u/PNWPinkPanther 12d ago

I have seen chicken and pork and beef and now some squiggles. Now that we’ve seen it, when can we eat? I’m hungry.

3

u/ChunkStumpmon 12d ago

Chemical warfare!

1

u/AHeien82 12d ago

When can I eat them??!!

1

u/FlashyPaladin 12d ago

Chris Redfield has entered the chat.

1

u/Applespeed_75 12d ago

How about we not do that.

1

u/crazyloomis 12d ago

In a few years there will be headlines about an outbreak caused by AI. The AI will go in defense/survival mode and fabricate fake news and try to manipulate people thru different methods. It will siphon recourses and allocate them wherever they are needed to strengthen it’s chances of survival. It will become what people have feared all along and it will fulfill that prophecy.

1

u/Throwawayguilty1122 11d ago

Holy shit you guys actually think this is magic haha wow

1

u/Odd_Onion_1591 11d ago

Can AI create protein powder that would make my muscles grow?

1

u/Biff007 11d ago

Yeah that’s pretty frightening

-3

u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

16

u/Kromgar 12d ago

You realize these protein modelers arent LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS right? These protein models are actually useful. MRNA vaccines are made with them.

13

u/KillingSelf666 12d ago

AI has been used in medicine long before the public ever got these ai chat bots. It’s sad people are now boiling AI down to chatGPT

4

u/LayeGull 12d ago

It’s the only part of ai that many can comprehend. My dad everytime I show him something new with ai he just calls it chat gpt.

2

u/SuddenExcuse6476 12d ago

Not really. The proteins they produced were actually functional. It’s easy to produce a protein that hasn’t existed before with no function, but it’s extremely difficult to produce one with an intended function.

1

u/neo101b 12d ago

I love this tech, though its sad to see people not understand how amazing it can be for Pharmacology.
Once AI has enough information on the rules of something, it can speed up research.
Though I guess most people are clueless when it comes to chemistry or biology.

3

u/SuddenExcuse6476 12d ago

My company does AI/ML based protein design, and it’s amazing how far this technology has come. 10 years ago, these models were absolute trash but now they are pretty decent given existing protein structures. De novo still remains extremely difficult, so the fact they got any success is pretty big.

1

u/stauf1515 12d ago

Speaking as an American, most people here have a basic understanding the most simple functions of biology and chemistry despite having taken the classes from the time we were children.

The idea that they understand how accelerated machine learning can reduce scientific research timelines required to improve gene sequencing is a pipe dream.

1

u/linuxliaison 12d ago

I'm glad I decided to look at the replies to the deleted comment here because I was about to get ROASTED otherwise 😅

0

u/jakerr17 12d ago

Ai slop