AI Tool Aims to Predict Virus Variants before They Appear

2023 · VOA Learning English

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1. Scientists have created an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that aims to predict different virus versions, called variants, before they appear.

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2. Creators of the tool say it works by estimating the likelihood that a variant will permit it to escape the body’s own immunity defenses.

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3. The tool is called EVEscape. It works by processing collected data on the development, or evolution, of a virus over time.

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4. The system also considers detailed biological and structural information related to the virus.

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5. The method is a form of “generative AI,” a term describing technology tools designed to operate at human levels.

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6. EVEscape was developed by researchers from Britain’s University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

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7. The team’s findings recently appeared in a study in the publication Nature Many viruses repeatedly mutate in an effort to stay alive and strong.

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8. This requires viruses to infect living organisms. Once inside the body, viruses continue to reproduce and spread.

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9. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains that repeated mutating creates new variants.

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10. Some of these mutations permit the virus “to spread more easily or make it resistant to treatments or vaccines,” the CDC said.

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11. The researchers built on previous work involving a tool they created called EVE.

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12. This tool was designed to study gene mutations that can cause human disease.

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13. In a past study, the team said it successfully used EVE to identify mutations linked to conditions like cancer and heart disease.

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14. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the scientists said they recognized a good chance to “rebuild” EVE into a new tool “for the purpose of predicting viral

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15. variants.” To do this, the team explained it “turned the clock back to January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic started.”

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16. The researchers asked the EVEscape tool to predict what mutations would develop from the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

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17. The researchers reported the tool correctly predicted which SARS-CoV-2 mutations would appear and which would become most common, or dominant.

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18. The team also said the tool predicted which antibody-based treatments “would lose their efficacy as the pandemic progressed and the virus developed mutations to escape

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19. these treatments.” The study noted EVEscape can make predictions more quickly and effectively than lab-based methods.

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20. This is because the tool does not need “to wait for relevant antibodies to arise in the population and become available for testing.”

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21. The team said the system was able to examine tens of thousands of new virus variants appearing each week and identified the ones most likely to become

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22. problematic. Sarah Gurev is a student in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technoology (MIT).

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23. She was a leader of the research. Gurev said that by quickly identifying the threat level of new variants, “we can help inform earlier public health decisions.”

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24. The team said it continuously uses the system to examine real-time data about the development of new variants of SARS-CoV-2.

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25. The researchers said their experiments also showed the EVEscape tool could successfully predict mutating behaviors for other common viruses, including HIV

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26. and the flu. Debora Marks is a professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School’s Blavatnik Institute.

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27. She was a lead writer of the study. She said the researchers would continue to improve the tool’s ability to predict new variants for a number of viruses.

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28. “Because if we can, that’s going to be extremely important for designing vaccines and therapies I’m Bryan Lynn.

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