Anthropic’s Claude finds new enzyme system

Investing.com -- Anthropic announced on Monday the creation of a new life sciences research group and laboratory focused on fundamental biology research. The company said its AI model Claude discovered a novel enzyme system with characteristics similar to CRISPR during the group’s early work.

The research team formed in spring 2026 to explore whether AI models can speed up biological discoveries. The group built a laboratory in the Bay Area that operates at biosafety levels BSL-1 and BSL-2, handling no human pathogens.

Claude identified the new system, called array-associated reverse transcriptases or ART, after searching through a database of DNA sequences. The AI used 950 agents over 21 hours, processing 210 million tokens of data. Scientists at Anthropic provided initial direction and conducted laboratory experiments, while Claude handled the database analysis.

The system consists of three components: a reverse transcriptase enzyme, a partner gene, and an array of evenly spaced DNA repeat sequences. The layout resembles CRISPR arrays, which store RNA sequences that make CRISPR-Cas systems programmable tools. Initial experiments show the ART array produces distinct short RNAs.

Feng Zhang, a CRISPR genome editing pioneer and professor at MIT and the Broad Institute, reviewed the pre-print. "This is an exciting example of how AI agents can contribute to biological discovery," Zhang said. "The identification of RNA-repeat arrays associated with reverse transcriptases is genuinely intriguing and merits further investigation."

The underlying reverse transcriptase in jumbo phage had been identified in previous studies. Claude appears to be the first to notice the system’s defining features, including the associated array of non-coding DNA sequences and an additional accessory protein.

Claude gathered over 200,000 reverse transcriptases, identified 3,500 new candidate systems, and narrowed those to 20 candidates for detailed analysis. The company said this type of analysis typically takes expert scientists weeks to months.

Anthropic released a pre-print detailing the findings. The company said work to understand the primary function of ARTs continues. Scientists use Claude Science and Claude Code, tools available to any researcher, to conduct their work.

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