Over 160,000 virus species discovered by Chinese-Australian AI tool

SYDNEY -- Over 160,000 new virus species have been discovered by Chinese and Australian researchers using artificial intelligence (AI).

A team of scientists from the University of Sydney, Apsara Lab of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and Sun Yat-sen University revealed in a study published in Cell that they used a new machine-learning tool to discover 161,979 new species of ribonucleic acid (RNA) virus.

The study was the largest virus species discovery paper ever published, the researchers said in a media release on Thursday.

The researchers said that the machine learning tool could significantly improve the mapping of life on the earth and aid in the identification of millions more viruses.

"This is the largest number of new virus species discovered in a single study, massively expanding our knowledge of the viruses that live among us," Edward Holmes, senior author of the study from the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Sydney, said in the media release.

"To find this many new viruses in one fell swoop is mind-blowing, and it just scratches the surface, opening up a world of discovery. There are millions more to be discovered, and we can apply this same approach to identifying bacteria and parasites."

To make the discovery, the researchers built a machine learning tool, called LucaProt, capable of computing genomically complex information and vast genetic sequence data.

Holmes said that many of the viruses had already been sequenced but that LucaProt was able to organize and categorize disparate information to identify viruses.

Co-author Li Zhaorong from the Apsara Lab of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence said the study demonstrated that AI can effectively accomplish tasks in biological exploration.

The team will next train the tool to identify even more viral diversity.