Claude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats
8 hours ago
- Anthropic has formed a new life sciences research group and lab to explore fundamental biology using the AI model Claude.
- Claude autonomously discovered a novel enzyme system called array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART), which has CRISPR-like characteristics.
- The discovery involved Claude analyzing over 200,000 reverse transcriptases and narrowing down to 20 candidates, with the ART system identified after 21 hours of processing by approximately 950 AI agents.
- The ART system consists of a reverse transcriptase, a partner protein, and an array of repeating DNA sequences, though its exact function is still under study.
- The workflow combines AI-driven hypothesis generation with human laboratory testing, aiming to accelerate biological discovery through human-AI collaboration.