superbug-killing potential
An AI Finds Superbug-Killing Potential in Human Proteins
Marcelo Der Torossian Torres lifted the clear plastic cover off of a petri dish one morning last June. The dish, still warm from its sleepover in the incubator, smelled of rancid broth. Inside it sat a rubbery bed of amber-colored agar, and on that bed lay neat rows of pinpricks--dozens of colonies of drug-resistant bacteria sampled from the skin of a lab mouse. Torres counted each pinprick softly to himself, then did some quick calculations. Untreated for the infection, the samples taken from an abscess on the mouse had yielded billions of superbugs, or antibiotic-resistant bacteria.