Claude Finds Crispr-Like Enzyme System After 21 Hours and 210 Million Tokens
Updated
Updated · The Verge · Sep 23
Claude Finds Crispr-Like Enzyme System After 21 Hours and 210 Million Tokens
3 articles · Updated · The Verge · Sep 23
Summary
Anthropic said nearly 950 Claude agents identified a previously uncharacterized enzyme system in bacteriophages after 21 hours of autonomous analysis, marking the first result from its newly launched wet lab.
210 million tokens of DNA-sequence searching led one agent to flag an unusual repeating pattern; Anthropic said human scientists only set the initial prompt and then validated the finding in the lab.
Anthropic still does not know what the enzyme system does, and it remains unclear whether the discovery has any practical use or anything close to Crispr's impact.
The early disclosure comes as Anthropic prepares to go public, recruits more scientists and pushes into drug discovery while AI companies increasingly use scientific research to showcase model value.