Today ainotis

Research24 Sep 2026That day's edition

Anthropic says Claude found a new bacteriophage enzyme system

An agent search through a DNA sequence database surfaced a previously uncharacterised system, which Anthropic calls ART.

Check our sources · 1 source, 6 claims

Anthropic says it gave Claude a prompt to search a massive database of DNA sequences for interesting new examples of reverse transcriptases.

After 21 hours spent searching by roughly 950 agents using 210 million tokens, one agent spotted an unusual pattern; Anthropic says that after further analysis and testing in its lab, it recognized the pattern as a previously uncharacterized enzyme system it calls array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART), consisting of a reverse transcriptase gene, a partner gene and a repeat array, found mainly in bacteriophages.

Anthropic says it does not yet know the system's function, and has released a pre-print with more detail.

Your reaction

One press adds one. We count a number for each notice and day, never who pressed it.

Check our sources

1 source, 6 claims. We opened the source and checked every sentence above against it.

1 Claude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeatsAnthropic · 23 Sep 2026 · 6 claims Open the source

  1. Roughly 950 agents spent 21 hours searching the data using 210 million tokens before one agent spotted the anomalous pattern.

    After 21 hours spent searching this data by roughly 950 agents using 210 million tokens, one of the agents spotted something remarkable: a repeating pattern of DNA sequences that occurs next to the gene for an odd-looking RT.

  2. The new enzyme system, ART, is found mainly in bacteriophages and consists of three parts: the RT, a partner gene beside it, and a long array of evenly spaced DNA repeat sequences.

    The system it found, ART, is found mainly in bacteriophages and consists of three parts: the RT, a partner gene beside it, and a long array of evenly spaced DNA repeat sequences.

  3. After further analysis and testing in Anthropic's lab, the pattern was recognized as a previously uncharacterized enzyme system that Anthropic calls array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART).

    After further analysis and testing in our lab, we recognized that this pattern marked a previously uncharacterized enzyme system found in bacteriophages (the viruses that infect bacteria) that we call array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART).

  4. We gave Claude a prompt to search through a massive database of DNA sequences for interesting new examples of RTs.

    We gave Claude a prompt to search through a massive database of DNA sequences for interesting new examples of RTs.

  5. Although Anthropic does not yet know its function, the system that Claude discovered has a set of characteristics that have only ever been found together in a handful of other systems.

    Although we don’t yet know its function, the system that Claude discovered has a set of characteristics that have only ever been found together in a handful of other systems, all of which are programmable and perform operations like cutting, copying, and pasting DNA.

  6. Anthropic says it has released a pre-print that discusses the discovery in more detail.

    We have released a pre-print (here) that discusses this in more detail.

Nothing appears on this site that we have not opened and linked.

Filed under