Claude Autonomously Discovers Novel CRISPR-Like Enzyme System

Anthropic's new life sciences research group has revealed that Claude autonomously discovered a novel enzyme system with properties reminiscent of CRISPR. Using only a high-level prompt, roughly 950 Claude agents spent 21 hours analyzing a massive DNA database, identifying a repeating DNA pattern linked to an unusual reverse transcriptase in bacteriophages, dubbed array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART). The underlying reverse transcriptase had been previously identified, but Claude appears to be the first to recognize its defining features, including associated non-coding DNA arrays and an unknown accessory protein. MIT professor and CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang called the findings genuinely intriguing, while Anthropic continues lab work to determine ART's primary function.