AI virus tool helps make “future-proof” vaccines

Harvard Medical School and the University of Oxford recently developed a new artificial intelligence tool called EVEscape. It predicts virus transformations and gathers biological and structural information about a specific pathogen. The study published in Nature claims it could have helped combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Most would expect an AI program to fight digital viruses or only perform computer tasks. However, modern artificial intelligence has powerful, real-world applications, such as this recent AI virus tool. Soon, it could become an important asset in preventing another global virus outbreak from transforming our world drastically. This article will discuss how the EVEscape AI virus program works. Later, I will cover a similar artificial intelligence tool that creates antibodies instead of vaccines. How does the AI virus tool work? The Harvard Gazette said the AI virus program started from EVE, which means “evolutionary model of variant effect.” It deals with gene mutations that cause human diseases. EVE’s core is a generative model that learns to predict how proteins work based on large-scale evolutionary data across species. It allowed researchers to differentiate between disease-causing and benign mutations that cause heart rhythm disorders and cancers. However, the COVID-19 virus swept throughout the world as an unpleasant surprise for researchers. It kept changing its structure, so therapies and vaccines struggled to beat it. “We underestimated the ability of things to mutate when they’re under pressure and have a large population in which to do so,” computational biologist Debora Marks stated. “Viruses are flexible: it’s almost like they’ve evolved to evolve.” However, Marks and her team saw the pandemic as an opportunity to improve EVE. They rebuilt it into an AI virus tool called EVEscape that predicts viral variants. They augmented its mutation prediction feature with biological and structural details of specific viruses. “We’re taking biological information about how the immune system works and layering it on our learnings from the broader evolutionary history of the virus,” co-lead author Nicole Thadani. You may also like: Does ChatGPT boost or reduce productivity? The experts tried it on COVID-19, and it processed thousands of new SARS-CoV-2 variants produced weekly and identified the most problematic ones. “By rapidly determining the threat level of new variants, we can help inform earlier public health decisions,” said co-lead author Sarah Gurev. The team posts a biweekly ranking of new SARS-CoV-2 variants found by EVEscape on their website. Visit that to see this AI