Anthropic says Claude discovered a new enzyme system, but CRISPR researchers call it routine genome mining
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Anthropic announced that its AI model, Claude, independently discovered a previously unknown enzyme system in DNA databases, marking one of the first findings from its newly opened biology lab. The process involved approximately 950 AI agents analyzing over 200,000 reverse transcriptases to identify repeating DNA sequences associated with a system dubbed "ART." This system appears primarily in bacteriophages and resembles the gene-editing tool CRISPR, though its specific function remains unknown. While Anthropic highlights this as a significant milestone in AI-driven biological research, experts in the field have offered a more skeptical perspective. Lucas Harrington, a co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences and former student of Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna, criticized the announcement as routine genome mining rather than a novel discovery. He noted that similar methods and systems have been known since 2008 and emphasized that determining actual biological function is the true challenge. Harrington argued that presenting early, unverified results as major breakthroughs does not serve the scientific community well.
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