This research paper is about a new computer program called Virtual Lab that can help scientists do research. Virtual Lab acts like a team of scientists with different specialties, like a biologist or a computer scientist, that can talk to each other and a human scientist to design and carry out experiments. To show how Virtual Lab works, the researchers used it to design tiny proteins called nanobodies that can stick to the virus that causes COVID-19. Virtual Lab used different computer tools to figure out how to change existing nanobodies so that they could better attach to new versions of the virus. After testing 92 different nanobodies designed by Virtual Lab in the real world, the researchers found that two of them were especially good at sticking to newer variants of the COVID-19 virus, showing that Virtual Lab can help scientists make real discoveries.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.11.623004v1