AI in Search of New Antibiotics!

Scientists constantly conduct research to find new antibiotics. Now they have started using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to find new antibiotics quickly. Through this, new opportunities are being created to use artificial intelligence in the study of antibiotic resistant behavior of various microorganisms, they said. A paper on scientists' search for antibiotics with AI has also been published in the journal Cell.

Cesar de la Fuente, a scientist at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, said, 'There is diversity in our world's microorganisms. We do not know about all microorganisms. We used an AI algorithm to find information on new microorganisms. The university's machine biology group is working on new antibiotic discoveries. Prior to the use of algorithms, older methods were used to find molecules in different samples. It takes many years to discover new microorganisms in that way. Massive amounts of data are now being analyzed rapidly with artificial intelligence-based algorithms. As a result, the whole process of finding microorganisms is quite fast. We used AI to analyze 6,680 compounds. In the meantime, we have discovered 9 possible antibiotics including abaucin.

Research and clinical trials usually take years to work on new antibiotics. Sometimes it can take 20 years to develop a new antibiotic. Where earlier one had to wait five-six years to develop an antibiotic, now tens of thousands of potential samples are being tested in a few hours using artificial intelligence. As a result, there is an opportunity to speed up the research of making antibiotics.

Source: The Guardian