Anthropic, an AI company, has announced that its wet biology lab in the Bay Area has identified a new enzyme system. The company describes this system as having "properties reminiscent of CRISPR," a natural immune system in bacteria widely used as a gene-editing technology.
Researchers at Anthropic believe they have found a previously unknown enzyme system within the DNA of bacteriophages, which are viruses that infect bacteria. They suggest this system can "perform operations like cutting, copying, and pasting DNA," similar to CRISPR.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated that the discovery was made "mostly, though not entirely, by Claude," the company's AI model. Amodei noted that the AI model completed the search in 21 hours, using approximately 950 agents and 210 million tokens.
The company confirmed last week that it operates the biology lab, where AI models are used to conduct physical experiments. All lab work is currently performed by human scientists, and the lab operates at lower biosafety risk levels (BSL-1 and BSL-2), not handling human pathogens.
Amodei has acknowledged that a team from Stanford previously discovered a system "that is in some ways similar to the one Claude found." The broader research community will need to validate the extent and novelty of this discovery.