How AI Agents Search Genomes for New Antibiotics

César de la Fuente's lab at the University of Pennsylvania uses Codex and ChatGPT to scan the genomes of living organisms and extinct species for new antimicrobial molecules. The goal is to find candidates capable of fighting bacteria that resist today's antibiotics.

Antibiotic resistance is spreading faster than new drugs are developed, and no human team can manually comb through millions of genetic sequences. Codex writes and runs the code needed to mine genomic databases, while ChatGPT helps researchers quickly interpret results and shape hypotheses for lab testing — work that once took months can now be checked in days.

Consider how much data in your own company — bank statements, reports, internal chats — piles up faster than staff can review it. 1Cifer's automatic checks work on a similar principle: the system compares periods and flags anomalies in transactions that a person could easily miss.