- Claude, Anthropic's AI, appears to be the first to spot this row of repeats, next to a gene scientists already knew about.
- Claude spotted it during a 21-hour search with about 950 AI agents on the job.
- Early lab tests found the repeats and the DNA between them get copied out as short RNA strands.
- What the new system actually does is still unknown.
"I can see by eye a tandem repeat array," wrote Claude, an AI made by Anthropic, as it read raw DNA. A repeat array is a series of similar short bits of DNA, with other DNA in between. Anthropic says Claude spotted a CRISPR-like pattern that earlier studies had not described, in viruses that attack bacteria. Anthropic says it doesn't know yet what role the pattern plays for those viruses.
Claude enzyme discovery announcement
CRISPR began as an odd repeat in bacteria, and an approved treatment now uses it to edit patients' cells. Anthropic says only a handful of other systems share the new find's mix of features, and all of them can be aimed at DNA to cut, copy or paste it. The new one hasn't been shown to do any of that yet.
Earlier studies had found a nearby gene that's thought to make an enzyme. Anthropic says Claude appears to be the first to spot the repeats beside it. After reading Anthropic's early paper, Feng Zhang, one of the pioneers of CRISPR gene editing, called the find "genuinely intriguing" and said it "merits further investigation." The work comes from the company's own lab, and the paper hasn't been through formal peer review. When the team ran the same search ten more times, none of those runs looked at the DNA that holds the repeats.
Anthropic says its scientists gave Claude a research brief and later tested the finding in the lab. In between, about 950 Claude agents worked on the search over about 21 hours, and one of them spotted the repeats. Anthropic says that kind of digging can take an expert scientist weeks to months.
Anthropic calls the new system ART. In its first tests, ART's repeats and the DNA between them were copied out as a set of short, separate RNA strands. That could be a clue, because CRISPR has its own bank of short RNA strands, and they're what let scientists aim it. Anthropic hasn't shown yet whether ART's strands do the same, and says the work to find out is still going.
