Artificial Intelligence helps scientists discover new viruses

Mumbai, July 27: Viruses are all around us, and we currently haven’t classified even a fraction of that huge and diverse population. The tiny organisms that can only survive inside a living host can wreak havoc on our bodies, but that’s not the only reason researchers are so compelled by them. We now know that viruses could be playing a part in “non-viral diseases” such as liver cirrhosis, or even chronic fatigue syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease but we still don’t understand how.

 

Because viruses can’t be grown in the lab, scientists have traditionally looked for new species by sampling various diverse environments (including metro carriages and sewage systems). But picking single microbes out of the dirt is a slow process that makes it difficult for researchers to understand the behavior of fast-evolving viruses.

That’s where AI comes in. Machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence used to identify complex patterns — the algorithm gets trained through a pool of data before becoming autonomous and can be used to scan massive genomic datasets in search of new viruses.

From identifying the role of viruses in non-viral diseases to matching viruses with specific families of bacteria to fight drug resistance, artificial intelligence may revolutionize how we navigate the largely uncharted landscape of these tiny microbes that play such a huge part in our lives.