phiX174 is an extensively studied and well understood virus, and only has around 5,400 base pairs and 11 genes, according to Nature.

After probing the AI model, the team came up with 302 virus designs. The best way to test them, the researchers figured, was to print, or chemically assemble, all of them and unleash them on real strains of E. Coli.

As it turned out, some of them worked. Once inserted into the poor waiting germs, 16 of the AI-designed viruses successfully infected their hosts by inserting their DNA, hijacking the bacteria to start cranking out copies of themselves, and then burst through the cell’s body, killing it

So they had a computer jumble up a bunch of different sequences of a minuscule viral genome and whoop-de-do some of them were still functional. These articles are all the same and all so tedious.