SAN FRANCISCO: Anthropic says its Claude enzyme discovery identified a previously uncharacterized genetic system in bacteriophage DNA, although researchers still do not know its precise biological function or practical value.
The company calls the system array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART). Researchers found it beside repeating stretches of DNA that resemble a CRISPR array, while the associated reverse transcriptases are enzymes that copy RNA into DNA.
Claude searched more than 200,000 reverse transcriptases and reduced them to about 3,500 unusual candidates. It then selected 20 systems for closer investigation.
The computational search took 21 hours. Anthropic said roughly 950 AI agents worked in parallel and processed about 210 million tokens during the project.
Human researchers then reviewed Claude’s hypotheses and conducted the laboratory experiments. Anthropic has released the early findings as a preprint, while further lab work continues.
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Feng Zhang, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Broad Institute researcher who helped pioneer CRISPR, reviewed the preprint. He called the finding “genuinely intriguing” and said it deserved further investigation.
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Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has acknowledged that ART’s precise function, potential biotechnology use and broader significance remain unclear. That uncertainty limits any immediate practical conclusions from the Claude enzyme discovery.
Shares of CRISPR Therapeutics, Intellia Therapeutics and Beam Therapeutics fell after the announcement, although no therapeutic application or development timeline has been established.
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Anthropic says Claude identified a previously uncharacterized enzyme system called ART in bacteriophage DNA, although its function and potential usefulness remain unknown.
