Anthropic said Claude autonomously discovered a previously unknown enzyme system in the DNA of bacteriophages, with properties the company compares to CRISPR1,3. The finding is the first result from Anthropic's wet biology lab in the Bay Area, which was established this spring.
Nearly 950 Claude agents worked in parallel for 21 hours, processing 210 million tokens while searching through a massive database of DNA sequences2. One agent spotted an unusual repeating pattern in the data. Anthropic said its scientists' involvement was limited to writing the initial prompt and performing physical lab work.
The enzyme system was hidden in the DNA of bacteriophages, viruses that infect and replicate within bacteria. Anthropic's researchers said the system behaves similarly to CRISPR in that it can perform operations like cutting, copying, and pasting DNA. CRISPR is a natural bacterial immune system that has become a widely used gene-editing technology.
Dario Amodei acknowledged on X that the discovery built on prior work and that a Stanford team had previously discovered a system "that is in some ways similar to the one Claude found". Amodei emphasized that the finding was made "mostly, though not entirely, by Claude". Validation of the discovery's significance will fall to the broader research community.
The lab has been open for only a few months, making the timeline from launch to claimed discovery notably compressed. Anthropic declined to specify exactly when the lab opened beyond confirming it was this spring. The company framed the result as an early test of Claude's usefulness for science, coming as Anthropic prepares to go public.
Humans remain in the loop: Anthropic has not let Claude operate unsupervised in the biology lab. ANALYSIS The disclosure serves a dual function, positioning Claude as a tool capable of autonomous scientific reasoning while giving Anthropic a concrete capability demonstration ahead of its planned public offering.