Anthropic’s AI biolab finds ‘CRISPR-like’ DNA in viruses. What’s next?
AI agents trawling through genomic data spotted sequences of DNA (artist’s illustration) reminiscent of those in bacterial CRISPR immune systems. Credit: Kateryna Kon/SPL/Getty
Sure, AI can parse petabytes of data. But how well can it pipette?
Regardless of the answer, artificial intelligence titan Anthropic has launched a biology ‘wet lab’ where human scientists and AI agents will work together to design and conduct experiments. This week, the company announced one of the team’s first finds: a peculiar pattern of DNA in the genomes of several giant viruses.
Similar patterns are found in DNA encoding the CRISPR immune systems of some microbes. Scientists have developed those microbial systems into powerful genome-editing tools. But researchers at Anthropic, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California, have not yet determined what the newfound viral sequences do, and thus whether their function is similar to that of the parallel sequences in microbial CRISPR systems.
In search of ‘weird things’
Even so, the finding, posted online on the alphaXiv platform, offers a first glimpse into Anthropic’s new life sciences research group and its associated lab, as well as how its AI tools could be used to mine petabytes of genomic data in search of novel molecular tools. The company announced the new lab and released the preprint on 23 September. The preprint has not yet been peer reviewed.
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