Anthropic on Wednesday announced the first research result from its physical biology lab in the Bay Area: Claude helped identify a previously unknown enzyme system in bacteriophage DNA with properties reminiscent of CRISPR. The company named the system array-associated reverse transcriptases, or ART — built around a reverse transcriptase with repeating DNA sequences that resemble CRISPR-like patterns, plus an array of non-coding DNA sequences and an additional protein of unknown function.

The discovery was made in 21 hours of concerted effort, with about 950 Claude agents processing 210 million tokens of DNA database data. CEO Dario Amodei noted on X that the work built on earlier research by others, and Anthropic acknowledged that while the underlying reverse transcriptase had been identified in previous studies, Claude appears to be the first to recognize the broader system's key features.

All physical experiments were performed by human scientists in the BSL-1/BSL-2 lab, which Anthropic confirmed last week and says was established this spring. Anthropic cautioned that outside researchers must still verify the finding. The announcement lands as AI developers debate tighter safety testing for advanced models, and as Amodei has simultaneously warned about AI-enabled bioterrorism and written that AI will 'cure most diseases in 5-10 years.'