Anthropic Launches Biology Lab, Claude AI Discovers CRISPR-like Enzyme System

Anthropic has revealed it established a biology research laboratory in the Bay Area in spring 2026, marking a significant move by the AI company into hands-on life sciences research. The company announced that Claude, its flagship language model, discovered a previously uncharacterized enzyme system after analyzing DNA sequence databases for approximately 21 hours. The system, called array-associated reverse transcriptases (ARTs), exhibits properties "reminiscent of CRISPR," the widely-used gene-editing tool, according to Anthropic's official disclosure.