AI will make it possible to design and build organisms from scratch

The Virtual Biology Initiative, led by Biohub (Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan) with DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and the Arc Institute, said on 7 October it has $800m of commitments to build predictive virtual-cell models, with the NIH contributing $500m-worth of data and the DoE similar compute. San Diego startup Genyro (co-founders include Arc’s Brian Hie) combines the Evo 2 DNA model with Caltech’s Sidewinder assembly method and aims to synthesise an artificial wheat chromosome. Other players include DeepMind’s AlphaGenome, BGI’s Genos and London’s Basecamp Research; Isomorphic plans partnerships with Novartis, Eli Lilly and J&J, and big pharma increasingly owns supercomputers. Arc designed 16 viable bacteriophages with Evo in 2025. The Economist sees potential in polyploid crops and plant immunity (photosynthesis is called a long shot), but cautions that virtual cells won’t capture all cell behaviour and the risk of “accidental monsters” grows as the tools spread.