~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
- DHH says hand-writing code is over as Pragmatic Engineer unpaywalls AI coding mega-trend piece — IgorCarron · 2026-09-24
- Gary Marcus Calls to Shut Down OpenAI and Charge It With Computer Crimes — GaryMarcus · 2026-09-24
- Jensen Huang says uncontrolled labs should shut down; Gary Marcus calls to pause OpenAI — Gary Marcus · 2026-09-24
- NYU Prof Questions AI-Slop Panic: AI Reviewers Rarely Accept Papers — ipeirotis · 2026-09-24
- Nick Clegg slammed for saying AI "can't even read a PDF" while pushing end of remote work — dioscuri · 2026-09-24
- Richard Susskind publishes The Future of Law: Reflections and Predictions via OUP — carlbfrey · 2026-09-24