Artificial intelligence is beginning to do more than answer questions it is now helping scientists make new discoveries.
Anthropic says its Claude AI has identified a previously uncharacterized biological system hidden within large amounts of DNA data. The system has been named ART (array-associated reverse transcriptases) and has some features similar to CRISPR, the biological system that later became a powerful gene-editing technology.
AI was reading raw DNA when it spotted a pattern scientists apparently hadn't noticed before.
Around 950 Claude agents spent 21 hours combing through more than 200,000 enzymes until one spotted an odd repeating pattern inside a virus that infects bacteria.
Lab tests found it's part of a previously uncharacterized enzyme system that resembles CRISPR, the system scientists turned into a powerful tool for editing DNA. What this new system actually does is still a mystery.
The scientists basically gave Claude the first prompt and handled the lab work, while CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang called the find “genuinely intriguing.”
CRISPR itself started with someone noticing a strange repeating pattern in bacterial DNA.
This time, the one who noticed was an AI
This could represent an important change in scientific research. In the future, AI could search millions of biological possibilities, identify promising discoveries and allow human researchers to focus on testing them in laboratories.
