Anthropic Discovers New Enzyme System with CRISPR-Like Repeats
Anthropic's AI system, Claude, has made an intriguing discovery: a previously unknown enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats in bacteriophage DNA. This finding, announced in a blog post and preprint (not yet peer-reviewed), marks the first outcome of Anthropic's new biology lab and molecular biology group.
What was found:
- A reverse transcriptase, an enzyme that copies RNA into DNA, located alongside a long array of repeating DNA segments reminiscent of CRISPR arrays.
- The system, named array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART), contains three components: the enzyme, a partner gene, and an array of evenly spaced short repeats.
Key Insights:
- While resembling CRISPR, ART arrays lack the cas genes typically found in CRISPR systems.
- In lab tests, the array produces distinct short RNAs, comprising up to 8% of the phage's RNA 15 minutes post-infection.
- Only a handful of known systems share these unique characteristics, all capable of cutting, copying, or pasting DNA.
How Claude Made the Discovery:
Claude was tasked with identifying new reverse transcriptase systems within a vast database of 1.9 billion protein clusters. Using its AI capabilities:
- Agent planning and execution: Tasks were planned and completed autonomously by agents, with a second agent reviewing each step.
- Efficiency: The campaign ran for 21.5 hours without human intervention, executing 949 sessions and generating 215.6 million tokens.
- Extensive data recovery: Agents identified around 200,000 enzyme clusters, analyzed 3,564 candidate partner families, and generated 19 reports for human review.
Comment from CRISPR Pioneer:
Feng Zhang, a renowned CRISPR expert at MIT and the Broad Institute, praised the discovery in his review of the preprint:
“The identification of RNA-repeat arrays associated with reverse transcriptases is genuinely intriguing and merits further investigation.”
What Remains Unclear:
- The specific function of the ART system.
- The difficulty in replicating the findings highlights the need for further investigation.