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AI-designed antivenoms could help treat lethal snakebites

2025/1/15

Nature Podcast

AI Deep Dive AI Chapters Transcript

People

Benjamin Thompson

Dan Fox

Jeff Tollefson

Lizzie Gibney

Susana Vázquez-Torres

Topics

Lizzie Gibney 和 Benjamin Thompson：蛇咬伤是一个严重的全球健康问题，现有治疗方法有限、昂贵且难以获取。 Susana Vázquez-Torres：我们利用计算机器学习设计了新型小蛋白抗蛇毒血清，在小鼠实验中显示出显著的保护效果。该方法具有成本低、稳定性好等优点，有望加速抗蛇毒血清的研发。下一步我们将进行药代动力学研究，并开发针对更多蛇毒的抗体鸡尾酒疗法。 Dan Fox：雄性蛛蜂利用腿上的毛发来探测配偶，小鼠大脑在深度睡眠期间会清除废物。 Jeff Tollefson：2024年地球平均温度首次超过工业化前水平1.5摄氏度，这表明全球变暖正在加速，未来气候灾害将更加严重。即使暂时超过1.5摄氏度，仍然有可能实现《巴黎协定》的目标，前提是未来能够减少碳排放。2024年高温事件可能促使各国政府采取更积极的气候行动。气候变化已经导致了更频繁和更严重的极端天气事件，我们应该认真对待气候变化的警告信号，并采取更积极的行动。 Lizzie Gibney：对细菌的研究存在偏差，少数几种细菌占据了大部分研究资源。前十名中最常见的细菌是与人类疾病相关的细菌。对未被充分研究的细菌进行研究对于理解微生物组和开发新的AI模型至关重要。

Deep Dive

Chapters

This chapter explores the development of AI-designed antivenoms as a potential solution to the global problem of snakebite envenoming. Researchers have successfully used machine learning to design proteins that neutralize snake toxins, offering a promising, cheaper, and more accessible alternative to traditional antivenoms.

AI used to design antivenoms against three-finger toxins from elapid snakes
Designed proteins showed near-total protection against snake toxins in mice
New antivenoms are potentially cheaper, heat-stable, and faster-acting than traditional antibody-based treatments

Shownotes Transcript

00:46 Designing new antivenoms to treat snakebites

Researchers have shown that machine learning can quickly design antivenoms that are effective against lethal snake-toxins, which they hope will help tackle a serious public health issue. Thousands of people die as a result of snakebites each year, but treatment options are limited, expensive and often difficult to access in the resource-poor settings where most bites occur. The computer-aided approach allowed researchers to design two proteins that provided near total protection against individual snake toxins in mouse experiments. While limited in scope, the team behind the work believe these results demonstrate the promise of the approach in designing effective and cheaper treatments for use in humans.

*Research Article: *Vázquez Torres et al.)

11:28 Research Highlights

How male wasp spiders use hairs on their legs to sniff out mates, and how noradrenaline drives waves of cleansing fluid through the brain.

Research Highlight: Male spiders smell with their legs)

Research Highlight: How the brain cleans itself during deep sleep)

13:53 Earth breaches 1.5 °C climate limit for the first time

News broke last week that in 2024, Earth’s average temperature climbed to more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. Although this is only a single year so far, we discuss what breaking this significant threshold means for the 2015 Paris climate agreement and what climate scientists understand about the speed that Earth is heating up.

Nature: Earth breaches 1.5 °C climate limit for the first time: what does it mean?)

23:39 Briefing Chat

NASA delays deciding its strategy for collecting and returning Mars rocks to Earth, and why papers on a handful of bacterial species dominate the scientific literature.

Nature: NASA still has no plan for how to bring precious Mars rocks to Earth)

Nature: These are the 20 most-studied bacteria — the majority have been ignored)

Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy) for more information.

AI-designed antivenoms could help treat lethal snakebites 33:52 Share