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Researchers seek to use natural language processing (NLP) AI to decipher virus genome’s language

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AI natural language processors analyze sentences in human languages but the human genome is a language with sentences too:

NLP can help predict “viral immune escape” — where the virus’s mutations prevent it from being destroyed by the human immune system. A research team led by computational biologist Bonnie Berger sees the virus’s ability to infect a host as “grammatical correctness” and its ability to stay there, despite efforts to get rid of it, as “semantic meaning.”

The comparison with the grammar of human speech might go something like this: Let’s suppose you want to say “I would like a glass of water.” You need a subject (I) , a verb (would like), and an object (a glass of water). Without grammar to organize your communications, no one will know what you want and you won’t get your glass of water. Similarly, the virus must use certain genetic sequences to infect a host; otherwise, it doesn’t get in.

News, “AI can fight COVID by detecting changes in virus “language”” at Mind Matters News

As noted there, “Far from living in a meaningless world, we live in a world so packed with meaning that we will likely never comprehend it all.”

See also: There is a glitch in the description of DNA as software. In contemporary culture, we are asked to believe — in an impressive break with observed reality — that the code wrote itself.

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