Anthropic reports the first result from its new molecular biology lab

Anthropic says the first result from its new molecular biology lab is a previously unknown enzyme system in bacteriophage DNA. Anthropic biologists use Claude to work through data and literature, generate hypotheses, and propose candidate biological systems to study. Scientists review those hypotheses and test the most promising ideas, and Anthropic says all laboratory work is done by its scientists.

Anthropic describes the system in an announcement. It says a long array of repeating DNA sits beside the enzyme’s gene and looks somewhat similar to CRISPR, but that it does not yet understand what the system does.

Anthropic says it wants to extend the approach to a broad range of problems in genomics and other fields and is inviting proposals for research questions.