Data-driven surrogates of rational design enable antimicrobial peptide optimization

Nature Machine Intelligence, Published online: 25 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s42256-026-01258-0 Rising pathogen drug resistance makes next-generation antimicrobial peptides a global priority. Generative AI accelerates discovery by rapidly proposing new peptides with high therapeutic potential. The key question is no longer whether broad data-driven exploration is possible, but whether it can refine biologically complex activity scaffolds.