AIClaude reportedly discovers a new enzyme system in bacteriophage DNA
Anthropic calls it the first result from its new molecular biology lab. The company says nearby DNA repeats look somewhat like CRISPR, but the system’s function—and whether it could have similar uses—remains unknown.
TLDR
Anthropic says Claude discovered a previously unknown enzyme system with a long array of repeating DNA beside the enzyme’s gene. The company describes its lab’s approach as Claude generating hypotheses from data and literature, with scientists reviewing the ideas and performing all lab work. One commenter welcomed the finding but called it very preliminary, saying the only real lab experiment was expressing the system in E. coli. Anthropic itself says much more work is needed to understand what the system does and whether it could be put to uses similar to CRISPR.