Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic announced that autonomous agents powered by its Claude model have discovered a previously uncharacterized enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeating DNA sequences in bacteriophages.
The newly identified biological mechanism, which researchers have designated array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART), was uncovered during exploratory work conducted by the company’s recently formed life sciences laboratory. To make the discovery, roughly 950 Claude agents operated continuously over a 21-hour period without direct human intervention, scanning a massive repository containing around 1.9 billion protein clusters. During this automated campaign, the agents filtered through more than 200,000 enzyme clusters before narrowing the pool to 20 high-priority candidates for human scientists to review.
The ART architecture emerged when an agent examining raw DNA sequences adjacent to an unusual enzyme noticed a distinct pattern of evenly spaced genetic repeats. The system is composed of three primary parts: a reverse transcriptase enzyme, an adjacent partner gene of unknown function, and a non-coding array containing multiple copies of the repeat sequence. Although earlier scientific studies had identified the reverse transcriptase itself, previous research had completely overlooked the accompanying repeat array and its neighboring partner gene.
Subsequent wet-lab validation performed by human scientists confirmed that the array transcribes into short, distinct RNA molecules, echoing the structural organization that allows CRISPR-Cas systems to target specific genetic material. Despite the structural resemblance, Anthropic cautioned that the precise cellular purpose of ART and its potential viability as a gene-editing biotechnology remain entirely undetermined. Outside molecular biologists have welcomed the finding as an intriguing demonstration of automated discovery while noting that extensive experimentation is still required to establish whether the mechanism can cut or modify DNA.