Health & biology · September 2025

AI-designed viable genomes

A genome language model writes working viruses.

Arc Institute and Stanford used the Evo genome models to design whole bacteriophage genomes modeled on phiX174. Of 285 synthesized designs, 16 were viable phages, the first functional genomes written by AI.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia Source

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Transformer 2017
Next-generation sequencing 2005

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Cost to sequence a human genome Latest: 525 $ (2022) Source: Our World in Data

Training compute of notable AI models Source: Epoch AI, Notable AI Models (CC BY 4.0)