Sep 23, 2026ScienceClaude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats

What happened: Anthropic formed a life sciences research group and lab, and says Claude autonomously discovered a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like DNA repeats, which the team calls array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART). Key numbers: About 950 agents searched for 21 hours using 210 million tokens. Work began in spring 2026. Lab work is BSL-1 and BSL-2. Why it matters: Feng Zhang of MIT and the Broad Institute called the RNA-repeat arrays associated with reverse transcriptases intriguing and said the work merits further investigation. The function of ARTs is still unknown.

Anthropic formed a life sciences research group and lab, and says Claude autonomously discovered a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like DNA repeats, which the team calls array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART).

Feng Zhang of MIT and the Broad Institute called the RNA-repeat arrays associated with reverse transcriptases intriguing and said the work merits further investigation. The function of ARTs is still unknown.