On Aug. 5, 2026, a team of Stanford University scientists announced using an AI model of their own creation that writes whole genomes, and has engineered a novel bacteria-fighting phage.

In science, the suffix “phage” means to devour. Thus, the name bacteriophage might conjure images of tiny creatures that “eat” bacteria. While that conception isn’t 100 percent scientifically accurate, bacteriophages are lethal bacteria killers nonetheless, and scientists are excited about engineering phage DNA as a path to new antibiotics.

And so it is that chemical engineer Brian Hie and bioengineering graduate student Samuel King came to study bacteriophage ΦX174 (pronounced “FYE-ex-1-7-4”). Hie, assistant professor of chemical engineering and the Dieter Schwarz Foundation Stanford Data Science Faculty Fellow, created Evo 2, a generative AI model that solves complex biological challenges by suggesting new DNA sequences. Given just the barest snippet of ΦX174 DNA, Evo 2 will go to work writing novel genomes of new phages that kill bacteria – in this case, the microbe E.

Until recently, Evo 2 was mostly confined to the computer, but in a new paper, Hie and King have transitioned it to a real-world lab. Based on genomes written by Evo 2, they have synthesized nearly 300 novel phages and tested them for effectiveness against E. coli. They later narrowed that list to a relative handful of 16 exceptionally good E. coli-killing phages.

The technical challenges of designing entire genomes – creating them nucleotide by nucleotide and then transferring them into bacteria – are neither easy nor inexpensive. King, first author on the paper, led the project.

As short as the ΦX174 genome is, Hie explains, it is extraordinarily difficult to stare at a 5,400-character string and make sense of it gene-by-gene. King developed a computational framework to help the researchers evaluate the genomes and to narrow down the list of candidates from thousands to only those the team deemed most interesting for further exploration.

Next up, Hie is working with other researchers at Stanford and beyond to extend Evo 2’s reach while pursuing his own research to create other new bacteriophages. He is also looking at longer and more complex DNA, possibly even of small bacterial genomes that might lead to beneficial engineered microbes that produce useful chemicals, medicines, fuels, and more.