By Ian Sample
Publication Date: 2026-01-28 16:15:00
Researchers at Google DeepMind have unveiled their latest artificial intelligence tool, claiming it will help scientists identify the genetic drivers of disease and ultimately pave the way for new treatments.
AlphaGenome predicts how mutations affect the way genes are controlled and how they change, when they are turned on, in which cells in the body, and whether their biological volume controls are set to high or low.
The most common diseases that run in families, including heart disease and autoimmune diseases as well as mental health problems, are associated with mutations that affect gene regulation, as are many types of cancer, but identifying the genetic disorders responsible is far from easy.
“We view AlphaGenome as a tool to understand what the functional elements in the genome do, and we hope it will accelerate our fundamental understanding of the code of life,” Natasha Latysheva, a DeepMind researcher, said at a press conference about the work.
The human genome contains 3 billion…
