Anthropic says Claude found an unknown enzyme system in bacteriophage DNA

Anthropic says Claude has discovered a previously unknown enzyme system hidden in the DNA of bacteriophages, described in Claude discovers a novel enzyme system. Beside the enzyme’s gene sits a long array of repeating DNA, a structure that looks somewhat similar to CRISPR.

Anthropic says it does not yet understand what the system does. Only a handful of known systems share its features, and all of them can cut, copy, and paste DNA. Anthropic says discoveries of such programmable systems have historically helped revolutionize medicine—CRISPR is now the foundation of genetic medicines—but much more work is needed to learn what this system does and whether it can be put to similar use.