(Nature) – Top artificial-intelligence models failed to predict the biological consequences of rewriting a virus’s entire DNA code.

Most of these mutations were detrimental to the virus’s survival, but for many of them, it was difficult to pinpoint why. “Even in this super well-studied system, we can’t explain why one-quarter of the mutations kill the virus,” says Ben Lehner, a molecular biologist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, who co-led the study, which was posted on the bioRxiv preprint server in July.

Cutting-edge AI systems for biology research that have shown promise in identifying harmful mutations struggled to predict the effects of the changes in the phage. The findings underscore the need for more, and better, experimental data to power these biological-AI tools. (Read More)