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US artificial intelligence company Anthropic said its “Claude” model autonomously identified a previously uncharacterized enzyme system associated with DNA repeats resembling CRISPR, according to the company.
Anthropic cautioned that scientists have not yet established what the system does or whether it can be used for gene editing. The finding was announced with the launch of the company’s life sciences research group and laboratory.
How Claude identified the system
The research group uses “Claude” to analyze DNA datasets, identify unknown protein families and generate hypotheses for human scientists to test. Anthropic said researchers gave the model a high-level instruction to search a large DNA sequence database for unusual examples of reverse transcriptases, enzymes that copy RNA into DNA.
Over 21 hours, about 950 “Claude” agents processed 210 million tokens, collected more than 200,000 reverse transcriptases, identified 3,500 candidate systems and narrowed the list to 20 for further investigation.
One agent detected a repeating DNA pattern next to the gene for an unusual reverse transcriptase. Further analysis identified what Anthropic named “array-associated reverse transcriptases”, or ARTs.
What are array-associated reverse transcriptases?
ARTs were found mainly in bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. The system consists of three components: a reverse transcriptase, a neighboring partner gene and a long array of evenly spaced DNA repeats.
The arrangement resembles a CRISPR array, a DNA structure that can produce RNA molecules used by CRISPR-Cas systems for targeted genetic activity. Anthropic said more testing is needed to determine the biological role of ARTs.
The company noted that the underlying reverse transcriptase had been identified in earlier research involving a jumbo phage. However, it said “Claude” appeared to be the first to recognize the associated repeat array and additional protein as elements of a potentially distinct biological system.
Feng Zhang, an MIT professor and one of the pioneers of CRISPR genome editing, reviewed Anthropic’s preprint. He described the link between reverse transcriptases and RNA-repeat arrays as “genuinely intriguing” and said it warranted further investigation.
Human scientists conducted laboratory work
CRISPR originated as a bacterial defense mechanism against viruses before scientists adapted it into a tool for precise DNA editing. The technology has contributed to treatments for genetic diseases and helped earn Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Anthropic said “Claude” was used only for computational research and hypothesis generation. Human scientists carried out all laboratory experiments, including biochemical tests examining the candidate system.
The company’s laboratory in the Bay Area operates only at the two lowest biosafety levels and does not handle pathogens capable of infecting humans.
Anthropic released a preprint describing the findings and said experiments to determine the function of ARTs are continuing. The company presented the work as an early example of how AI agents could help researchers search large genomic databases, identify unusual patterns and accelerate analyses that might otherwise take weeks or months.
