Anthropic introduced a life sciences research group with its own laboratory and shared an early result: Claude agents found a previously uncharacterized enzyme system in bacteriophages, which the team calls array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART). The system pairs a reverse transcriptase, an enzyme that copies RNA into DNA, with an array of repeated non-coding DNA sequences and an accessory protein of unknown function, a combination reminiscent of CRISPR.
The scientists wrote only the initial prompt and did the lab work. Roughly 950 agents searched a large DNA sequence database for 21 hours using 210 million tokens before one flagged the repeat pattern, which the team then analysed and tested. Anthropic says the system's primary function is not yet known, has released a preprint, and notes that all lab work is done by human scientists at biosafety levels 1 and 2.