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Anthropic’s Claude Finds New ART Enzyme System in Phage

By Drooid · Sep 24, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC · How we work

Summary

Claude AI Discovers Enzyme

Anthropic’s Claude AI discovered a new enzyme system, array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART), in bacteriophage DNA.
Claude agents scanned a 1.9-billion protein database for reverse transcriptases in 21 hours.
MIT’s Feng Zhang called the arrays intriguing; Kevin Blake warned they cannot rival CRISPR.
Lab tests showed the ART repeat array makes distinct short RNAs, but enzyme activity is unproven.
Shares of CRISPR-related firms fell, with CRISPR Therapeutics dropping to about $56.39.

Summary

Anthropic Opens Biosafety Lab

Anthropic opened a Bay Area biosafety-level 1/2 laboratory to test AI-generated hypotheses.
The lab follows BSL-1 and BSL-2 standards and does not handle human pathogens.
Anthropic’s life-sciences team, assembled in spring 2026, integrates Claude’s autonomous agents for genomic searches.
Human researchers conduct all wet-lab experiments while Claude’s agents perform the computational search.
Anthropic released a preprint on the ART discovery, urging community validation to speed biology from months to hours.

History

Historical Context

In 2012 Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier published the first CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing method, a breakthrough later honored with the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Broad Institute secured early patents in 2014, fueling massive biotech investment and spawning AI-assisted platforms such as Anthropic’s 2026 Claude-driven BSL-1/2 lab that scans a large protein database.

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Claude AI Discovers Enzyme

Anthropic’s Claude AI discovered a new enzyme system, array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART), in bacteriophage DNA.
Claude agents scanned a 1.9-billion protein database for reverse transcriptases in 21 hours.
MIT’s Feng Zhang called the arrays intriguing; Kevin Blake warned they cannot rival CRISPR.
Lab tests showed the ART repeat array makes distinct short RNAs, but enzyme activity is unproven.
Shares of CRISPR-related firms fell, with CRISPR Therapeutics dropping to about $56.39.

1 / 3