Artificial Intelligence Algorithm Discovers New Antibiotic

[Shenandoah]

This is really fascinating news. A group of scientists have discovered a new powerful antibiotic by using artificial intelligence. The really cool part is that this new antibiotic seems to be effective even to some drug-resistant bacteria. The fact that more and more bacterias are growing resistant to antibiotics is definitely not news as we've been aware of this for quite some time now, and this new antibiotic seems very promising.

Although they didn't provide much information on the model, they did say that the model they employed was a deep-learning one. I wonder what's in store for the future as we continue finding new ways to apply artificial intelligence to the area of health.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200220141748.htm

 

[Space Pirate]

Read about it on arstechnica https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/a-neural-network-picks-promising-antibiotics-out-of-a-library-of-chemicals/ some interesting stuff.

arstechnica:

But most of the attention was given to a molecule they're calling halicin (according to a press release, in honor of 2001's AI, HAL 9000). Halicin was originally developed to target a human protein in the hopes it would help treat diabetes. Given that background, we shouldn't be surprised that halicin doesn't look anything like known antibiotics. (This was true for most of the molecules identified in the various screens.)

Halicin was effective against a wide variety of bacterial species (although not all) and is effective against known drug-resistant strains. The researchers also created wound infections that they successfully treated with halicin. It also cleared up C. diff infections, a common cause of drug-resistant digestive-tract problems. Critically, halicin also killed cells that weren't undergoing cell division—going quiet is a way that many bacteria manage to survive antibiotic treatments.

The researchers decided to find out how halicin worked by evolving a resistant strain. Amazingly, they didn't manage to do so, which is obviously a positive. So instead, they looked at the genes that were active in bacteria exposed to halicin. These provided a hint as to how halicin works: by interfering with the balance of protons within the cell. Bacteria normally use their energy to pump protons out of the cell, using their return to drive the production of ATP and move the flagella that propel them through water. With halicin present, the protons make their way back inside the cell without doing anything useful.

Time will tell if it shows promise in human trials.