Anthropic says Claude found a new enzyme system in DNA data

In short: Anthropic says its Claude AI system identified a previously unknown enzyme system after scanning a large DNA database, and company scientists then confirmed it in the lab.

What happened

Anthropic, the company behind the AI assistant Claude, says Claude “autonomously discovered” a new enzyme system. Enzymes are proteins that act like tiny tools in living things, speeding up chemical jobs inside cells.

According to Anthropic, Claude searched through a huge database of DNA sequences. DNA is like an instruction book for living things. The company said the human researchers mostly provided the starting prompt and then did the lab work to check what the AI flagged.

Anthropic said it used nearly 950 Claude “agents” working for about 21 hours and processing 210 million “tokens” (tokens are pieces of text the AI reads, like words or word parts). One agent found an unusual repeating pattern and sent it to humans for review. After more analysis and lab testing, Anthropic said it was a “previously uncharacterized enzyme system” found in bacteriophages, which are viruses that infect bacteria.

Anthropic compared the find to Crispr, a well known gene-editing method often described as molecular scissors (a tool that can cut and change DNA). The company also said it is still working to understand what this newly found enzyme system does.

Why it matters

This is an early example of AI being used to sift through scientific data and point researchers to something worth testing, like a search assistant that can scan millions of pages and highlight a strange passage. Still, a discovery like this does not automatically lead to new medicines or products. Outside scientists will likely want more details and independent confirmation before anyone knows whether it has real world uses.

Source: The Verge AI