'Machine learning could reveal knowledge we didn’t even think about.''In recent years, researchers have hunted for unknown viruses by sequencing DNA in samples taken from various environments. To identify the microbes present, researchers search for the genetic signatures of known viruses and bacteria — just as a word processor’s ‘find’ function highlights words containing particular letters in a document. But that method often fails, because virologists cannot search for what they do not know. A form of AI called machine learning gets around this problem because it can find emergent patterns in mountains of information. Machine-learning algorithms parse data, learn from them and then classify information autonomously.
“Previously, people had no method to study viruses well,” says Jie Ren, a computational biologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “But now we have tools to find them.”
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With machine learning, Unutmaz says, researchers might identify viruses in patients that have remained hidden. Further, because AI has the ability to find patterns in massive data sets, he says, the approach might connect data on viruses to bacteria, and then to protein changes in people with symptoms. Says Unutmaz, “Machine learning could reveal knowledge we didn’t even think about.” '
- Nature,
Machine learning spots treasure trove of elusive viruses, March 19, 2018
ContextOptalysys - '..supercomputing levels of processing power accessible to a much wider audience..'(Open Source) - '..“open innovation.” Companies such as AstraZeneca, Lilly, GSK, Janssen, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi, TransCelerate, and others..'HPC Masters: Ian Foster on “The Grid” - By Ian FosterHolacracy – ‘..to fully harness the power of every human sensor..’