September 29, 2026
The lab got a candidate from AI agents: Claude found an enzyme system in 21 hours
On Sep 23, around 950 Claude agents processed 210 million tokens over 21 hours and identified ART, a new reverse-transcriptase system. Anthropic is still validating its function in the lab: initial experiments found only a set of short RNA molecules.
First, Anthropic gave Claude a single prompt: search a large DNA database for new variants of reverse transcriptases. The agents then independently searched for candidates and prepared evidence-backed hypotheses, while humans filtered out most options before lab testing.
Search funnel. The agents assembled more than 200,000 RTs, found 3,500 new candidate systems, and prepared reports on 20. ART consists of an RT, a neighboring partner gene, and a long series of DNA repeats structurally similar to a CRISPR array.
The same toolkit. Anthropic used Claude Science and Claude Code, which are available to scientists, and added its own tooling for some parallel sessions. Claude Science operates as a beta app with models from the selected plan, runs analyses on the user's infrastructure, and connects to 60+ scientific databases.
Claude Science requires a Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise plan. On Team and Enterprise, an owner enables the app in the organization settings, after which it can be downloaded for macOS 13+ or Linux x64. Anthropic's lab operates at BSL-1 and BSL-2, does not study human pathogens, and all experiments are conducted by scientists.
Anthropic's further lab experiments with ART are ongoing.
