950 Claude agents, 21 hours, 210M tokens: Anthropic's lab discovers a never-before-recorded enzyme system
新智元 · wechat · 2026-09-24
Anthropic's molecular biology lab unveiled its first result: 950 Claude agents ran for 21 hours, consuming 210M tokens, scanning over 200,000 reverse transcriptases and 3,500 candidates to autonomously discover a previously unrecorded enzyme system in jumbophage DNA, named ART (Array-associated Reverse Transcriptase system), with humans handling experimental validation.
- ART resembles CRISPR structurally: a reverse transcriptase, a companion gene, and a long array of regularly spaced DNA repeats; early experiments show the array expresses distinct short RNAs, with its mechanism still under study.
- The division of labor: AI expands the search, generates hypotheses and reports; scientists judge evidence and run all wet-lab experiments. Dario said he'd be proud for life if this were his PhD work.
- It aligns with Dario's Machines of Loving Grace prediction that AI could help cure most diseases within 5-10 years.
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