Nature has spent billions of years fighting bacteria – AI could help us learn its secrets

Martha Clokie and Andrew Millard (University of Leicester) write in The Conversation that, after Stanford researchers used AI to design a complete ΦX174-based phage genome, the more useful question is whether AI can explain how natural phages work. They propose mining collections of naturally occurring phages to link DNA sequence, protein structure and phage behaviour (for example host range and defeat of bacterial defences), with every prediction still tested experimentally.