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@ 2020/02/21Boffins asks Hal to sort out antibiotic problems
While people worry about AI taking over the world and killing humans, it looks like one AI has come up with a powerful antibiotic that kills some of the most dangerous drug-resistant bacteria in the world.
According to the Guardian medical science is desperate to find new antibiotics, so boffins trained a "deep learning" algorithm to identify the sorts of molecules that kill bacteria. To do this, they fed the program information on the atomic and molecular features of nearly 2,500 drugs and natural compounds, and how well or not the substance blocked the growth of the bug E coli.
Once the algorithm had learned what molecular features made for good antibiotics, the scientists set it working on a library of more than 6,000 compounds under investigation for treating various human diseases. Rather than looking for any potential antimicrobials, the algorithm focused on compounds that looked effective but unlike existing antibiotics. This boosted the chances that the drugs would work in radical new ways that bugs had yet to develop resistance to.
While people worry about AI taking over the world and killing humans, it looks like one AI has come up with a powerful antibiotic that kills some of the most dangerous drug-resistant bacteria in the world.
According to the Guardian medical science is desperate to find new antibiotics, so boffins trained a "deep learning" algorithm to identify the sorts of molecules that kill bacteria. To do this, they fed the program information on the atomic and molecular features of nearly 2,500 drugs and natural compounds, and how well or not the substance blocked the growth of the bug E coli.
Once the algorithm had learned what molecular features made for good antibiotics, the scientists set it working on a library of more than 6,000 compounds under investigation for treating various human diseases. Rather than looking for any potential antimicrobials, the algorithm focused on compounds that looked effective but unlike existing antibiotics. This boosted the chances that the drugs would work in radical new ways that bugs had yet to develop resistance to.
