“VIRTUAL LAB” RUNS THOUSANDS OF EXPERIMENTS WITH A FEW CLICKS

There are millions of genetic mutations whose effects are unknown. Some might have therapeutic benefits. Weeding through them all to find out which ones have value could take millions of hours of lab work.

Now computers can do that.

Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have created CRÈME, a virtual lab that runs on AI. With a few clicks, geneticists can run thousands of experiments to quickly learn what those unexplored parts of the human genome actually do.

CRÈME was inspired by CRISPR, the Nobel Prize-winning gene editing technology. 

A CRISPR feature known as CRISPRi enables researchers to mute the activity of specific genes inside a cell. 

Cold Spring researchers adapted the technique in a way that enables scientists to turn down parts of a genome to see what results. 

“CRISPRi is incredibly challenging to perform in the laboratory,” research leader Peter Koo said in a press statement. “You’re limited.” Many of those limits disappear when done virtually in a computer.

“The scale of experiments that we performed is unprecedented,” he added—“hundreds of thousands of experiments.” 

After that, the Cold Harbor group ran CRÈME on an AI-driven genome analysis tool called Enformer. 

Enformer makes predictions about what specific parts of the genome do but no one has known how it comes up with those determinations. 

CRÈME allowed Koo’s team to discover specific rules about gene expression that Enformer had learned while analyzing how the genome works.

Those rules can give scientists more options in “tuning” gene expression more precisely and predictably, Koo said.

TRENDPOST: In addition to revealing the workings of the genome’s inner recesses, CRÈME can democratize discovery: scientists at smaller institutions without elaborate research facilities could use the virtual lab to make headline breakthroughs of their own.