Claude agents discover a novel CRISPR-like enzyme system in bacteriophages
Original titleClaude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats
Anthropic's new life sciences group reports that Claude autonomously identified a previously uncharacterized enzyme system, called array-associated reverse transcriptase (ART), in bacteriophages.
Claude agents searched over 200,000 reverse transcriptases, narrowed 3,500 candidates to 20, and one agent flagged a CRISPR-like repeat array after about 21 hours. Human scientists then validated the finding in the lab, and the function of ART remains unknown.
The post shows how Claude agents surveyed DNA sequence data, flagged a candidate, and then led to lab validation, which is a concrete workflow for AI-assisted biology research.
Source: Anthropic Newsroom · anthropic.comPublished · added here