CREME’s AI-Powered Virtual Lab Shows Potential for Real World Therapeutics

CREME is an AI-powered virtual laboratory simulating gene activity changes developed by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which provides large-scale genetic research and shows new ways of unlocking fresh insights into gene regulation for potential therapeutic breakthroughs.

A new AI tool by the name of CREME from Assistant Professor Peter Koo and his team of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has opened up unprecedented virtual doors that geneticists can utilize, letting thousands of experiments run with a single click. It will make geneticists one step closer to delving deep into the genome that has been open for discovery ever since it unlocked the trail to further scientific discoveries, through virtual manipulation of gene activity.

AI meets CRISPR: The science behind CREME

Modelled after CRISPR interference, CREME simply functions like CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) in turning down the activity of specific genes within a cell. Rather than relying on physical experiments, CREME uses AI to simulate these virtually, thus speedier and scalable by an order of magnitude. More or less, this is like an AI powered version of CRISPRi that lets scientists manipulate gene activity in silico, predicting their effects on gene expression.

Modeled after the cutting-edge genetic technique CRISPR interference (CRISPRi), CREME lets the researcher dim the activity of certain genes in a virtual world. While CRISPRi enables the actual manipulation of genes in wet labs, CREME now brings this concept into a virtual world. Scientists can now model changes to the genome and predict what these would look like in terms of alterations in gene activity at a scale and precision that was heretofore unimaginable.

Future of gene research-an avenue to new therapeutic targets

CRISPRi-based experiments in the real laboratory are limited only by the number of tests and resources available. But in the virtual setting of CREME, all those constraints disappear, and hundreds of thousands of gene experiments can be run at a scale previously unimaginable. As Koo says, “it’s because it’s virtual that the researchers can push the frontiers of genetic research like never before”.

With continued development, CREME could become an essential research tool for discovering new therapeutic targets. In particular, the tool provides a virtual web-based platform through which scientists across the globe can make groundbreaking changes in gene regulation without being hampered by any laboratory apparatus. This tool might, therefore, democratise genetic research since it might enable more scientists to contribute to critical discoveries that would change the face of medicine.

Know more about this article here.