Stanford and Arc Institute researchers just used genomic models Evo 1 and Evo 2 to generate 16 viable, completely novel viruses that infect and destroy drug-resistant E. coli. It marks the first time a language model has created functioning genomes from scratch, sparking immediate debate over biosafety guardrails.
Arc Institute just used its Evo biological foundation model to design fully functional bacteriophage genomes from scratch. Using the classic phi X 174 phage as a template, the team tested 285 designs and verified 16 viable viruses that successfully infected host bacteria and overcame resistance mutations. Why it matters: genomics is officially crossing the bridge from reading and writing DNA to directly prompting functional living organisms.
Arc Institute, Stanford, and NVIDIA just rolled out Evo 2, the largest publicly available biological foundation model. Trained on nearly 9 trillion nucleotides across all domains of life, it handles 1-million-token contexts and scored 90% accuracy in predicting breast cancer gene mutations.
