AI model Claude discovers CRISPR-like enzyme system, Anthropic says

AI giant Anthropic has announced the discovery of a new enzyme system in bacterial DNA that it said could “represent a new gene editing mechanism” similar to the groundbreaking CRISPR tool.

Anthropic said on Wednesday that its signature AI model, Claude, had “autonomously” discovered the system at the prompting of researchers working at the company’s recently established biology research lab in San Francisco.

The tech giant said the system showed characteristics found in only a handful of other “programmable” structures and displayed a “pattern reminiscent of CRISPR”, a genome-editing mechanism found in bacteria.

CRISPR technology has been credited with advancing the treatment of a range of diseases, including sickle cell disease and cancer.

Anthropic, which is at the centre of a vigorous global debate about how to maximise the benefits of AI while mitigating catastrophic risks, said it had not determined the function of the system. It said Claude discovered the system after spending 21 hours searching a large database of DNA sequences.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has claimed that AI could cure most diseases within five to 10 years, said in a post on X that his company suspects the “molecular machine” could “represent a new gene editing mechanism”. He said AI was only at the “very beginning” of making discoveries that could lead to medical breakthroughs.

“I’m genuinely rooting for all of the frontier labs to seriously get into biological discovery, and I’m excited about what comes out of it,” Amodei added.

Stanley Qi, an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, described the reported discovery as “incredibly exciting.”