Can machine learning design living organisms?

[Mr Green T]

TL;DR Summary

Controlling evolution with data.

Pop culture interpretation: Machine learning reveals recipe for building artificial proteins
Actual Study: Evolution-based design of chorismate mutase enzymes

Using Boltzmann machine learning to design enzymes with evolutionary compatible statistical constraints is possible now.

How much longer until machine learning can design living organisms?

 

[shjacks45]

My Dad was a Reliability Engineer for Boeing, Lockheed, etc. and couldn't understand Software Reliability Engineering. Software is just a mathematical algorithm that is either works or it doesn't. Problem with complex interactions is there will always be some flaw, somewhere. "The law of unintended consequences." Many of the "flaws" in biological systems happen through trial and error, and are crucial for the feedback that keeps the system stable. At the rate of DNA and enzyme discovery you would be using incomplete data. You would have to build your enzymes in accordance with current allosreic regulation and make sure your enzyme has no fatal allosteric weakness. And we need to take into account the multiple interactions we still don't know about for each enzyme. SARS has only 8 simple genes on a single strand, and we don't even yet know how it works let alone duplicate it. Still Science Fiction for the near future.