Anthropic: Claude discovers a previously unknown CRISPR-like enzyme system

Anthropic said Claude found an unknown enzyme system in bacteriophage DNA: a reverse transcriptase gene beside a long repeat array that looks somewhat like CRISPR, which it calls array-associated reverse transcriptases (ARTs). It said it does not yet know what the system does. The search reportedly used ~950 agents for 21 hours. Feng Zhang called it 'an exciting example' (quoted in Anthropic's post, not found as his own X post). Lucas Harrington's same-day thread called this kind of genome mining routine (x.com/CRISPR_LuCas/status/2102878373160906938). On Sept 27 Copenhagen biologist Mario Rodríguez Mestre told the New York Times it matches his team's unpublished 'jumbotron' work, which he had shared in Claude conversations; Anthropic said it knew of no prior published work and that Claude was not trained on user transcripts (Irish Times/NYT, 2026-09-28). Verified via syndication: 2026-09-23T18:18:33Z.

Claude has discovered a previously unknown enzyme system hidden in the DNA of bacteriophages. Beside the enzyme’s gene sits a long array of repeating DNA—a structure that looks somewhat similar to CRISPR.

We don’t yet understand what this system does, but only a handful of known systems share its features, and all of them are able to cut, copy, and paste DNA. Historically, the discovery of such programmable systems has helped revolutionize medicine. CRISPR, for instance, is now the foundation of genetic medicines. But it will take much more work to learn what this system does, and whether it can be put to similar use.

Read more: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-discovers-novel-enzyme-system

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Archived 2026-09-29 via fxtwitter (unofficial).