theSIGNAL SCIENCE
8 August 2026
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
NEWSBUSINESSTECHNOLOGYWORLDSCIENCECULTUREENVIRONMENTSPORT
Science

AI Writes Viral DNA — and It Actually Works

For the first time, artificial intelligence has designed functioning virus genomes from scratch, thrilling doctors and alarming biosecurity experts in equal measure.

Sixteen. That is the number that matters most in a new paper published in the journal Science. Researchers at Stanford University fed an AI model a library of two million bacteriophage genomes, asked it to invent new ones, and watched it generate thousands of candidates. Nearly 300 were built in a laboratory dish.

Only sixteen came alive — but those sixteen were enough to change everything. Bacteriophages are viruses with a very specific grudge: they attack bacteria and nothing else. Doctors in Georgia, Poland and Bangladesh have used them for decades to treat patients whose infections laughed off every antibiotic on the shelf. Now Dr Brian Hie, a chemical engineer at Stanford, has shown that an AI — using something called a genome language model, essentially the genetic cousin of the software behind ChatGPT — can design brand-new phages that never existed in nature.

A cocktail of his AI-built viruses killed strains of E. coli that were resistant even to natural bacteriophages. The bacteria had no answer for something evolution had never prepared them for. The excitement, however, is running alongside a chill.

Photo: Julia Koblitz / Unsplash
A researcher examines bacteriophage cultures in a biosafety laboratory, where AI-designed viruses were tested against drug-resistant E. coli.
Discuss
  • Why did the researchers deliberately exclude human and animal virus data from the AI's training, and was that enough?
  • Should governments regulate AI-designed genomes the same way they regulate chemical weapons research?
  • Bacteriophage therapy has been used in Eastern Europe for decades — why is it still uncommon in Western medicine?
Science

US Pays Companies to Kill Wind Farms

Here is a strange equation: a government pays energy companies *not* to build something. That is exactly what the Trump administration keeps doing with offshore wind. German giant RWE has now agreed to surrender its ocean leases off California, Louisiana, and New York — in exchange for a promise to invest €17 billion elsewhere in the US. It follows similar deals with France's TotalEnergies and North Carolina-based Duke Energy, which received $129 million to abandon its own wind lease. President Trump, who once called turbines "big, ugly windmills," insists the future runs on fossil fuels.…
  • Is paying companies to abandon clean energy projects a smart use of public funds?
∞
The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not.
Professor Tom Inglesby and Dr Moritz Hanke, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
Science

Earth's core made a surprise U-turn

Something strange happened 2,200 kilometres beneath the Pacific Ocean in 2010. A vast river of molten iron, which had been drifting westward for years, abruptly reversed and surged eastward instead. Nobody knows why. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh used data from ESA's Swarm and CryoSat satellites — alongside Germany's CHAMP mission and Denmark's Ørsted mission — to trace the shift across nearly three decades of measurements. The reversal matters because that churning liquid iron is what generates Earth's magnetic field.…
  • Is the 2010 reversal a one-time event or a sign of a repeating cycle?
AMERICAS · Science
567-million-year-old fossils rewrite the dawn of animal life
OCEANIA · Science
Scientists tracked 12 people in Antarctica for 10 months—what happened could shape future Mars missions
WORLD · Science
AI-generated stories rated better quality than human-written ones, study finds
GLOBAL · Science
A star’s violent death exposed a hidden supermassive black hole
theSIGNAL IN THE LAB
1VOCABULARY
bacteriophagesgovernance
generative AIgenomeoffshore
churningresistant
2GRAMMAR FOCUS
Passive voice — full range (simple, continuous, perfect, modal passive)
The passive voice is formed with a form of 'be' plus a past participle; it is used when the action is more important than the agent, and can appear in simple, continuous, perfect, and modal forms (e.g. is built, was being tested, has been shown, must be regulated).
was reversed · has been shown · are being killed · must be addressed · had been drifting · were built · should be excluded
  1. Nearly 300 bacteriophage genomes in a laboratory dish before scientists identified the sixteen that actually came alive.
  2. By Dr Brian Hie's team at Stanford, it that a genome language model can design viruses that never existed in nature.
  3. Resistant strains of E. coli by the AI-designed phage cocktail in experiments that stunned the scientific community.
  4. The question of who controls AI-designed genomes before the technology spreads beyond responsible research teams.
  5. The vast river of molten iron westward for years before it abruptly changed direction in 2010.
  6. The direction of the liquid iron flow suddenly in 2010, surprising scientists who had assumed the core was stable.
3DEPENDENT PREPOSITIONS
Complete each phrase with the correct preposition. All from today's articles.
  1. Scientists traced the magnetic shift ___ nearly three decades of measurements.
  2. The AI model was fed a library ___ two million bacteriophage genomes.
  3. Doctors have relied ___ bacteriophages to treat antibiotic-resistant infections.
  4. The bacteria had no answer ___ something evolution had never prepared them for.
  5. RWE agreed to surrender its leases ___ exchange for a promise to invest elsewhere.
4CRITICAL THINKING
The articles show three different institutions — a university lab, a national government, and an international satellite programme — each operating independently on technologies that affect the whole planet. What does this tell us about how scientific and political power is currently distributed, and whether that distribution is fit for purpose?
5CREATIVE · HEADLINES
Write a headline for the top story in each of the following styles. One line each, no explanation:
  • TABLOID NEWSPAPER
  • LUXURY MAGAZINE
  • ACTIVIST BLOG
6WRITING
The Stanford team made responsible choices voluntarily, but Dr Inglesby and Dr Hanke warn that not every researcher will. Write a proposal outlining one concrete governance mechanism — not a ban — that could reduce the risks of AI-designed genomes without stopping legitimate medical research.
7DEGREES OF EXTREMITY
Complete each ladder from mild to strong.
  • uncommon→→
  • concerned→→
  • questioned→→
  • resistant→→
  • interesting→→
  • declined→→
8SPEAKING
  1. Which of the three articles worries you most personally, and why?
  2. Should scientific breakthroughs ever be kept secret from the public?
  3. Who should decide how Earth's resources — wind, ocean, core — are used?
  4. Does commercial money make scientific research more or less trustworthy?