Anthropic Establishes Life Sciences Research Team, Claude Discovers New Enzyme System with CRISPR-like Features

On September 23 local time, Anthropic announced the establishment of a life sciences research team and laboratory, along with the early findings of Claude's involvement in biological research. Researchers stated that after analyzing over 200,000 reverse transcriptase (RT) sequences, Claude discovered a previously undescribed enzyme system, naming it 'Array-associated Reverse Transcriptase' (ART). Anthropic revealed that approximately 950 Claude agents utilized around 210 million tokens over 21 hours to screen 3,500 candidate systems, ultimately narrowing them down to 20. ART is primarily found in bacteriophages that infect bacteria and consists of reverse transcriptase, adjacent auxiliary genes, and a set of regularly arranged DNA repeat sequences, the latter of which shares similar characteristics with CRISPR repeat sequences. Preliminary experiments indicate that these repeat sequences are also transcribed into multiple short RNAs, though their specific functions remain to be further studied. The research was experimentally validated by Anthropic scientists, and the company has released a preprint. (Sina Finance)