AUSTIN, Texas — A group of international researchers, including four from the University of Texas at Austin, had AI aid them in a quest to fight a virus.

Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is caused by the monkeypox virus and is in the same genus as smallpox. Mpox had an outbreak in Africa in 2023, which has been classified as a public health emergency by the World Health Organization .

As published in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers from UT used AI to predict proteins that counteract the mpox virus in mice. Jason McLellan, a professor and the Robert A. Welch chair in chemistry at UT, was interviewed originally by UT News and praised AI for its help with the project.

“It would have taken years to find this target without AI,” McLellan said. “It was really exciting becaus

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