Anthropic opens wet lab: Claude-driven agents discover novel CRISPR-like enzyme in 21 hours
IgorCarron · x · 2026-09-24
Anthropic announced it has set up a molecular biology lab and revealed its first discovery: a novel CRISPR-like enzyme system found by Claude.
- 950 agents spent 21 hours searching DNA sequence databases until one flagged a striking tandem repeat array near an RT that looked CRISPR-like.
- The team then analyzed and experimentally tested the sequence in the lab, confirming it is a previously uncharacterized enzyme system. Its function is still unknown, but it has features reminiscent of CRISPR.
- The company notes the lab is a typical molecular biology setup and the research only involves lower biosafety risk levels.
It's an early demonstration of a closed-loop AI scientific discovery pipeline combining agent-driven computational search with wet-lab validation.
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