Anthropic's Claude autonomously discovered a novel CRISPR-like enzyme system

Anthropic's wet lab used its own AI models to run physical experiments and found a new enzyme system. The system is hidden in bacteriophage DNA and Anthropic says it has CRISPR-like properties. But Claude isn't running loose in the lab—humans are still in the loop. The post doesn't disclose the enzyme's specific function, validation data, or publication plans.

Anthropic's new life sciences lab let Claude autonomously search DNA databases for 21 hours. It found a previously uncharacterized enzyme system, ART, with an array of non-coding DNA repeats reminiscent of CRISPR. Claude handled literature review, candidate filtering, and report writing; scientists only gave the initial prompt and ran lab validation. The post does not disclose what the system actually does—the team says that work is ongoing.

Anthropic's newly launched wet lab produced its first result: Claude autonomously discovered a new enzyme system by searching a massive DNA sequence database, and the company is comparing the find to Crispr. Over 21 hours, nearly 950 Claude agents processed 210 million tokens before one spotted an unusual repeating pattern. Human scientists were only involved in the initial prompt and downstream lab work. The post doesn't disclose functional validation data, off-target rates, or direct performance comparisons with Crispr—treat this as an early proof-of-concept timed right before Anthropic's planned IPO.