Why AI Isn't Ready to Tackle Our Convoluted Genomes

Like scientists, AI models don't yet have the data to properly decode it. Researchers have only scratched the surface of the messy, three dimensional knots that influence how our genomes function.Courtesy of Quanta The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Since its molecular structure was deduced in the 1950s, DNA has been hailed by many biologists as the secret of life. They've read and studied the information stored in the DNA found in the cells of living organisms, known as their genomes, and claimed that this genetic database must be some kind of blueprint, code script, or computer. But if DNA really does harbor some greater secret about how life works, biologists have yet to find it. In fact, the human genome is less a script than a puzzle that gets harder the closer they look. Knowing the entire sequence--the order of all 3 billion or so of our DNA's chemical building blocks, nearly fully deduced by the international Human Genome Project between 1990 and 2003--hasn't helped much. That investigation showed that barely 2 percent of the human genome consists of actual genes, the information-coding sequences of DNA.