Anthropic says Claude found an enzyme system with a long repeating DNA array beside the enzyme’s gene—a structure it describes as somewhat similar to CRISPR. The company says much more work is needed to understand its function or possible uses.

Dario Amodei says the work was mostly, but not entirely, Claude’s: Anthropic’s team suggested a broad research area, Claude examined literature and genome data and proposed experiments, and the team carried them out.

A critic calls Claude’s recognition of the repeating architecture a meaningful discovery, but argues that Anthropic undercredits earlier human research. The critic says researchers had already described the MarsHill phage’s enzyme and a nearby noncoding region, providing important clues for the later work.