Anthropic says Claude found a new enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats

Anthropic says Claude has found a previously undescribed enzyme system in the DNA of bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria. Next to the enzyme’s gene sits a long run of repeating DNA that resembles a CRISPR array. The company does not yet know what the system does.

Anthropic announced the result on Wednesday in a blog post and a preprint that has not been peer reviewed. It is the first result from a new molecular biology group and lab inside the company. The team calls the system array-associated reverse transcriptases, or ART.

A reverse transcriptase is an enzyme that copies RNA into DNA. Bacteria often use these enzymes to defend against viruses. ART has three parts: the enzyme, a partner gene beside it, and an array of evenly spaced DNA repeats.

The layout recalls CRISPR, where an array holds a bank of different RNA guides. According to the preprint, ART...

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