AI designs functional viral genomes from scratch, and 16 of them actually work

Generative AI just crossed a line that scientists have been eyeing for years. Researchers at Stanford University and the Arc Institute have used AI to design complete viral genomes from scratch, and 16 of those designs turned out to be fully functional viruses. Not partially functional. Not simulated. Actually alive, in the biological sense, and capable of infecting bacteria. The preprint, released on bioRxiv on September 12, 2025, marks the first time generative AI has successfully produced working viral genomes end-to-end. These are bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, not humans. What the researchers actually built The team, led by Brian Hie at Stanford and involving collaborators from the Arc Institute, NVIDIA, and UC Berkeley, used genome language models called Evo 1 and Evo 2. Instead of predicting the next word in a sentence, they predict the next base pair in a DNA sequence. The team generated 302 candidate phage genomes based on the architecture of a natural virus called ΦX174, a bacteriophage that infects E. coli. Of those 302 candidates, 16 were experimentally confirmed to assemble into viable viruses and successfully infect and lyse E. coli bacteria. Several of...