Anthropic disclosed that its artificial intelligence model, Claude, contributed to the discovery of a new enzymatic system exhibiting characteristics similar to CRISPR mechanisms. This is the first result presented from the company's biological research projects.
To achieve this discovery, Claude processed vast DNA databases. The newly identified system was structured around a reverse transcriptase (RT), an enzyme capable of transcribing RNA into DNA, and was named ART.
ART stands for 'reverse transcriptases associated with arrangements.' This system possesses repetitive DNA sequences resembling patterns observed in CRISPR and was detected in data from bacteriophages, which are viruses responsible for infecting and multiplying inside bacteria.
Although the reverse transcriptase forming the basis of this system is not new—as previous studies had already characterized it—Anthropic attributes to Claude the recognition of a more comprehensive set of attributes. This includes a matrix of non-coding DNA sequences and an additional protein whose function has yet to be determined.
The similarity to CRISPR lies in the system's properties that potentially allow actions on genetic material, such as cutting, copying, and pasting. However, the scientific community still needs to evaluate the level of novelty and the scope of this discovery.
According to Anthropic, the work was done 'mainly, although not entirely, by Claude.' The model dedicated 21 hours to the research, utilizing approximately 950 agents and processing 210 million tokens.
This announcement came just days after the company's biological laboratory was revealed. This facility, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, United States, is dedicated to conducting physical molecular biology experiments.
The AI acts as a participant in the research but does not execute procedures alone in the laboratory. Anthropic clarifies that the experiments are conducted by human scientists and are limited to BSL-1 and BSL-2 biosafety levels. Furthermore, the company assures that it does not handle pathogens capable of causing infections in humans.
The future role of AI
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, acknowledged the possibility of Claude playing a more direct role in experiments in the future. He stated that, eventually, it would be feasible for Claude itself to conduct tests safely, autonomously managing laboratory equipment, provided that proper safeguards were implemented, but stressed that such practice does not currently occur.
For now, ART represents the first result disclosed from Anthropic's biological research efforts, awaiting evaluation of relevance and degree of innovation by the scientific community.