Artificial intelligence in genomics, a promising future?

Genomics is the branch of modern biology that studies how an organism functions on a genomic scale. The discipline could revolutionize many industry sectors, especially public health. It could also contribute to tackling some of today’s major issues, such as ending world hunger and preserving biodiversity. Florence d’Alché-Buc, holder of the Télécom Paris DSAIDIS Chair, explained at a Génopole conference how artificial intelligence and genomics can interact.

The aim of artificial intelligence (AI) is to produce programs designed to perform complex tasks  specific to human intelligence. They include reasoning, generalizing, explaining, planning, learning from examples. Over time, AI has established itself firmly in the digital sector and enabled the development of machine learning, a discipline in which computers use data to perform complex tasks. Thanks to machine learning, it is now possible to combine genomic data with algorithms. This interaction could lead to spectacular progress in many industry sectors such as medicine, the environment and agronomy.

During the conference, Florence d’Alché-Buc analyzed several AI contributions to the field of genomics, which also produces large amounts of data.