~950 Claude agents autonomously discover ART, a novel CRISPR-like enzyme system
AI寒武纪 · wechat · 2026-09-24
Anthropic reports that its AI autonomously discovered ART (Array-associated Reverse Transcriptase), a previously unknown enzyme system that could enable next-generation CRISPR-like gene editing — with the first round of wet-lab validation already done.
- Highly autonomous process: humans only set the macro direction ("find interesting reverse transcriptases in DNA databases"); 950 Claude agents ran for 21 hours, consumed 210M tokens, screened 200,000+ reverse transcriptases down to 3,500 candidates and finally 20 priority targets.
- Standout moment: one agent spotted an anomalous "CRISPR-like tandem repeat array" next to a giant phage gene, then computed repeat spacing, compared known systems, searched literature, and wrote a full hypothesis report.
- Validation: Anthropic built BSL-1/BSL-2 wet labs in the Bay Area; first experiments confirmed the ART array expresses as specific short RNAs, suggesting a programmable biological mechanism.
- Reactions: CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang called it "an exciting case of AI agents driving biological discovery"; CEO Dario Amodei said it meets the standard he'd have been proud of in his PhD.
The writeup argues biology's discovery cycle is compressing from years to days via an "AI generates hypotheses at high throughput, humans verify fast" paradigm.
More from AGI Musings
- Sakana AI × Pathway Post-Transformers lecture on AI and the brain now online — kaixhin · 2026-11-11
- An AI model's 8-point answer on how humans can thrive in the 'Age of Miracles' — daniel_mac8 · 2026-11-11
- Podcast with X's biggest AI account: how one post made Manus famous in the West — kimmonismus · 2026-11-11
- Area Chair: reviewing AI-written reviews of AI-generated papers, the only human in the loop — murat_kocaoglu_ · 2026-11-11
- Dev Dimillian calls for content on AI-assisted work vs. pure AI slop — Dimillian · 2026-11-11
- How long until a phone-runnable model solves a Millennium Prize Problem — and Siri still lags? — paul_cal · 2026-11-11