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The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA | Quanta Magazine

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The computer scientist Brian Hie led the team behind Evo, a large language model trained on 2.7 million bacterial, archaeal and viral genomes. The AI tool can write original DNA sequences that encode functional biological machines. Rachel Bujalski for Quanta Magazine Contributing Writer February 5, 2025 DNA is often compared to a written language. The metaphor leaps out: Like letters of the alphabet, molecules (the nucleotide bases A, T, C and G, for adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine) are arranged into sequences — words, paragraphs, chapters, perhaps — in every organism, from bacteria to humans. Like a language, they encode information. But humans can’t easily read or interpret these instructions for life. We cannot, at a glance, tell the difference between a DNA sequence that functions in an organism and a random string of A’s, T’s, C’s and G’s. “It’s really hard for humans to understand biological sequence,” said the computer scientist Brian Hie (opens a new tab) , who heads the

The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA | Quanta Magazine Home The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA Read Later Share Copied! Comments Read Later Read Later genomics The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA By Ingrid Wickelgren February 5, 2025 By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s “ChatGPT for genomes” could pick up patterns that humans can’t see, accelerating biological design. Read Later The computer scientist Brian Hie led the team behind Evo, a large language model trained on 2.7 million bacterial, archaeal and viral genomes. The AI tool

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