MIT's deep learning found an antibiotic for a germ nothing else could kill ZDNet

One hundred years ago, the state of the art in finding antibiotics was epitomized by the playful explorations of Alexander Fleming, the Scotsman who discovered penicillin. "I play with microbes," Fleming is quoted as having said. "It is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able to find something nobody had thought of." Today's research in antibiotics is conducted somewhat more mechanically, perhaps, but it's still important to break the rules sometimes, to look where one might not otherwise. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard last month described in the scholarly journal Cell how they used a deep learning neural network to identify a molecular compound that's different from most antibiotics.