In the last few years, artificial intelligence has revolutionized the field of molecular biology. The revolution began with the AlphaFold algorithm, which rapidly predicts the complex three-dimensional structures of proteins, thus helping to understand protein functions and identify drug targets. This year, AI made another breakthrough, this time at the other end of the drug discovery line: In 2022, several groups reported the first successful applications of AI to identify new antibiotic drugs.
Antimicrobial resistance is a major global threat. Global research into the antimicrobial resistance report, published this year in the Lancet, showed that 4.95 million deaths worldwide in 2019 were related to drug-resistant bacteria, making untreatable infections one of the leading causes of death. Developing new drugs that overcome resistance and replenish our effective antimicrobial arsenal is a constant challenge.
This is where artificial intelligence is now starting to make a big contribution. For example, Yue Ma of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues used machine learning techniques originally developed for natural language processing to identify antimicrobial peptides encoded by genome sequences of microbes in the human gut. The algorithm identified 2,349 potential antimicrobial peptide sequences. Of these, 216 peptides were synthesized by chemical methods and 181 were shown to have antimicrobial activity. That's an impressive success rate that wouldn't have been possible without the help of AI. Even more strikingly, almost half of the peptides discovered are completely new and have no obvious sequence similarity to known antimicrobials, thus increasing the chances of overcoming existing resistance mechanisms. Animal experiments showed that three of the new peptides can be used for the safe and effective treatment of bacterial pneumonia in mice. Studies like this are good news and promise an unprecedented fast track toward new treatment options for some of the direst pathogenic threats we currently face.
Source
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/18/the-10-biggest-science-stories-of-2022-chosen-by-scientists
