India, Sept. 9 -- Scientists recently gave an artificial intelligence system an assignment to come up with the genetic instructions for a virus. They made DNA from the system's suggestions and put it into bacteria. Some of the bacteria began producing new viruses, which went on to infect other cells.

Researchers at Stanford University and the Arc Institute had chosen viruses that infect bacteria and cannot infect people. Of 285 designs they made and tested, 16 worked. Their study, first shared last September, was published in Science last month.

Genes contain instructions for making proteins, and a genome is the complete set of genetic instructions. In a virus, those instructions enable it to use a host cell to produce its components, a...