Some of Our Sources
- BoingBoing
- Joshua Blankenship
- Pearsonified
- Naldz Graphics
- Noupe
- Fudge Graphics
- Specky Boy
- CSS Tricks
- Android Headlines
- Dev To
Help Webnuz
Referal links:
March 10, 2020 07:20 pm
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wItWl6X1hRg/machine-learning-takes-on-antibiotic-resistance
Machine Learning Takes On Antibiotic Resistance
To combat resistant bacteria and refill the trickling antibiotic pipeline, scientists are getting help from deep learning networks. From a report: Once-powerful antibiotics are losing their efficacy at a disconcerting pace as bacteria evolve immunity to our drugs. At least 700,000 people around the world now die each year from infections that could formerly be treated with antibiotics. A report last year from the United Nations Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance warned that if no new major advances are made by 2050, mortality could leap to 10 million deaths a year. What makes this prognosis all the more dire is that the antibiotic pipeline has slowed to a trickle. In the past two decades, only a few new antibiotics have been found that kill bacteria in novel ways, and rising resistance is a problem for all of them. Meanwhile, traditional methods of identifying antibiotics by screening natural compounds continue to come up short. Because of this, some researchers are now turning from the wet lab to silicon power in hopes of finding an answer. In the February 20 issue of Cell, one team of scientists announced that they -- and a powerful deep learning algorithm -- had found a totally new antibiotic, one with an unconventional mechanism of action that allows it to fight infections that are resistant to multiple drugs. The compound was hiding in plain sight (as a possible diabetes treatment) because humans didn't know what to look for. But the computer did. Using computers and machine learning to make sense of mountains of biomedical data is nothing new. But the team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led by James Collins, who studies applications of systems biology to antibiotic resistance, and Regina Barzilay, an artificial intelligence researcher, achieved success by developing a neural network that avoids scientists' potentially limiting preconceptions about what to look for. Instead, the computer develops its own expertise.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wItWl6X1hRg/machine-learning-takes-on-antibiotic-resistance
Share this article:
Tweet
View Full Article
Slashdot
Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..More About this Source Visit Slashdot