
Anthropic’s biolab made a discovery it’s comparing to Crispr
Anthropic announced that its AI model Claude autonomously discovered a novel enzyme system in bacteriophages, a finding the company compares to the impact of CRISPR. The discovery was made by nearly 1,000 Claude agents over 21 hours, processing 210 million tokens to identify an unusual repeating pattern in a DNA sequence database. This result serves as an early demonstration of Claude's scientific capabilities as Anthropic prepares for an initial public offering and expands its wet lab operations.
- ▪Anthropic's AI Claude identified a previously uncharacterized enzyme system in bacteriophages after analyzing a massive database of DNA sequences.
- ▪The discovery process involved nearly 950 Claude agents working for 21 hours and consuming 210 million tokens before flagging the pattern for human review.
- ▪Anthropic states that human scientists were only involved in providing the initial prompt and conducting subsequent lab testing to verify the findings.
- ▪The company is using this discovery to demonstrate Claude's utility in scientific research as it prepares to go public and expand into areas like drug discovery.
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| Original publisher | The Verge |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/999470/anthropic-biolab-claude-crispr |
| Publication time | 2026-09-23T14:00:00-04:00 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-23T18:04:30.850Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-23T18:04:30.850Z |
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| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Cluster | 0JyY5BNFNHf1 · 1 stories |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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AICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AINewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All NewsScienceCloseSciencePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ScienceAnthropic’s biolab made a discovery it’s comparing to CrisprIt took nearly 1,000 Claude agents 21 hours and 210 million tokens to uncover the ‘novel enzyme system.’It took nearly 1,000 Claude agents 21 hours and 210 million tokens to uncover the ‘novel enzyme system.’by Robert HartCloseRobert HartAI ReporterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Robert…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Verge.