soon it may even be possible to make evolutionary forecasts. Scientists may not be able to predict what life will be like 100 million years from now, but they may be able to make short-term forecasts for the next few months or years. And if they’re making predictions about viruses or other health threats, they might be able to save some lives in the process.

a procedure to predict influenza mutations every year with 90% precision, helping to produce the right vaccines for that season.

We can analyze any mutation, even those that haven’t been identified yet. This allows researchers to predict whether a novel mutation is likely to be dangerous or harmless — in essence, performing a screening test

and another one

10 years of work at Johns Hopkins has yielded a computer program that predicts, with far more accuracy than current methods, which mutations are likely to have the largest effect on the activity of the “dimmer switches” (which alter the cell’s gene activity) in DNA — suggesting new targets for diagnosis and treatment of many diseases.

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