Scientists have started to work on making programs that can make sense of data from cells atlases which are like catalogs of data from different cells. An A.I. program called GeneFormer, which was made by a computational biologist was fed data of 30 million cells. The scientist tested heart cells from individuals with abnormal heartbeat rhythms and GeneFormer was able to recommend the reduction of activity in 4 genes that previously have not been related to heart disease. When the genes activity were reduced 2/4 of the cases had improvements in the cell activity. This caught the attention of Stanford who then built CellXGene which is one of the biggest databases of cells of 33 million. This program made a Universal Cell Embedding which grouped cells into clusters of how genes were used. Other scientists believe this can create the correct representation of a cell and even predict what a cell would do in any situation. In order to keep this from turning into a risk there was a signed call for technology to be regulated so no biological weapons could be made.
In my opinion I think this is how we can advance our understanding of life. I think A.I. could be extremely helpful or the worst thing that will happen. However, if we keep it regulated to do no harm I believe this could help us battle many types of diseases and issues of the human body as well as other species.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/science/ai-learning-biology.html?searchResultPosition=8
Additional Link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/19/1079261/czi-ai-cell-disease/
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