Claude autonomously discovers a CRISPR-like enzyme system
Claude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats
Anthropic formed a life sciences lab to test whether general AI models can accelerate biological discovery. In one early program, roughly 950 Claude agents searched a DNA database for 21 hours, using 210 million tokens, and identified a novel enzyme system called array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART). Found in bacteriophages, ART combines a reverse transcriptase, an accessory protein, and a CRISPR-like array of DNA repeats. Lab experiments show the array is expressed as short RNAs, though its function remains unknown. A pre-print is released.
This is an exciting example of how AI agents can contribute to biological discovery. The identification of RNA-repeat arrays associated with reverse transcriptases is genuinely intriguing and merits further investigation.