Anthropic Says Claude AI Helped Discover Novel Enzyme System
Claude scanned more than 200,000 reverse transcriptases and flagged a new bacteriophage enzyme system that may resemble CRISPR arrays, Anthropic said.
- On Wednesday, Anthropic announced its AI, Claude, "autonomously discovered" a previously unknown enzyme system in bacteriophages called array-associated reverse transcriptase , which shares structural similarities with CRISPR systems.
- Roughly 950 Claude agents spent 21 hours analyzing 210 million tokens from a massive DNA database before identifying the repeating pattern, according to the preprint.
- According to the preprint, the newly identified system consists of a reverse transcriptase enzyme, a partner gene, and an array of DNA repeats, with arrays holding 3 to 21 copies of a short repeat.
- Further analysis and lab testing revealed "a previously uncharacterized enzyme system found in bacteriophages," though researchers have not yet determined its biological function or whether it operates like CRISPR.
- Anthropic established a Bay Area molecular biology laboratory to validate such findings, as the company seeks to demonstrate its models' utility for scientific research and drug discovery.
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23 Articles
According to the company, nearly a thousand copies of Claude working in parallel have screened a base of DNA sequences for 21 hours to perform an analysis that would take weeks or even months to a researcher. These IA agents have noticed, in viruses that attack bacteria, a pattern apparently gone unnoticed so far: short fragments of DNA repeated at regular intervals, next to an enzyme already known and a protein whose role is unknown. This organ…
Globo
CNN BrasilSoon from Anthropic in illustration made in June 2026. Data Ruvic/Reuters Anthropic announced on Wednesday that its artificial intelligence model Claude helped to discover a new enzyme system with properties reminiscent of the mechanisms of genetic editing technology CRISPR, marking the first result of the AI company's biology research efforts. The discovery occurs a few days after Reuters reported that Anthropic discreetly created a biological …
Channel News Asia
WTVBAnthropic says Claude AI helped discover novel enzyme system
Sept 23 : Anthropic on Wednesday said its Claude model helped discover a novel enzyme system with properties reminiscent of mechanisms in gene-editing technology CRISPR, marking the first result from the AI startup's biology research efforts. The finding comes days after Reuters reported Anthropic had quietl
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