AI model Claude discovers CRISPR-like enzyme system, Anthropic says

AI giant announces discovery amid global debate about how to safeguard against catastrophic risks.

The Claude logo is seen in an illustration created on June 5, 2026 [File: Dado Ruvic/Reuters]

AI giant Anthropic has announced the discovery of a new enzyme system in bacterial DNA that it said could “represent a new gene editing mechanism” similar to the groundbreaking CRISPR tool.

Anthropic said on Wednesday that its signature AI model, Claude, had “autonomously” discovered the system at the prompting of researchers working at the company’s recently established biology research lab in San Francisco.

list 1 of 4 OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs call for global AI regulation at UN

list 2 of 4 China’s Xi visits US as Trump bets on stabilising global relations

list 3 of 4 Turkiye agrees to gradual handover of Bashiqa base to Iraq

list 4 of 4 Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez promises elections at UN, gives no date

The tech giant said the system showed characteristics found in only a handful of other “programmable” structures and displayed a “pattern reminiscent of CRISPR”, a genome-editing mechanism found in bacteria.

CRISPR technology has been credited with advancing the treatment of a range of diseases, including sickle cell disease and cancer.

Anthropic, which is at the centre of a vigorous global debate about how to maximise the benefits of AI while mitigating catastrophic risks, said it had not determined the function of the system. It said Claude discovered the system after spending 21 hours searching a large database of DNA sequences.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has claimed that AI could cure most diseases within five to 10 years, said in a post on X that his company suspects the “molecular machine” could “represent a new gene editing mechanism”. He said AI was only at the “very beginning” of making discoveries that could lead to medical breakthroughs.

“I’m genuinely rooting for all of the frontier labs to seriously get into biological discovery, and I’m excited about what comes out of it,” Amodei added.

Stanley Qi, an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, described the reported discovery as “incredibly exciting.”

“What stands out is its ability to recognize an unusual biological pattern that was difficult to detect before, and to pursue it comprehensively as a research question,” Qi told Al Jazeera.

“Nature contains an enormous diversity of molecular systems we barely understand, and some patterns are very complicated but highly meaningful; AI could greatly expand our ability to explore them more effectively and rapidly, in this case, in just 21 hours,” he said.

However, Kevin Blake, a microbiologist at Washington University School of Medicine, expressed scepticism about the scientific significance of the announcement.

“Because the identified array is ‘CRISPR-like’, some have leaped to conclude Anthropic discovered the ‘next CRISPR’ – ie, a Nobel Prize-winning gene editing technology,” Blake told Al Jazeera.

“CRISPR-the-technology is very different from CRISPR in nature, which is basically a bacterium’s immune system. It has long been known that there are countless CRISPR-like sequences we have yet to identify and catalogue because there are millions of bacterial species we have yet to study,” Blake said.

“There’s nothing to indicate this is a rival to CRISPR-the-technology, or could be developed into any kind of therapeutic or practical application,” he added.

Emmanuelle Charpentier, a microbiologist at the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, and Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, pioneered the use of the naturally occurring CRISPR system to edit DNA in living organisms, earning the pair the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Last year, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in the US announced that doctors had treated a patient with a customised CRISPR gene-editing therapy for the first time.

In what the hospital called a “historic” medical breakthrough, researchers developed a bespoke therapy to successfully treat an infant born with carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 deficiency, a rare metabolic disease.

在全球就如何防范灾难性风险展开辩论之际，人工智能巨头宣布了一项新发现。

克劳德的标志出现在 2026 年 6 月 5 日创作的一幅插图中 [图片：Dado Ruvic/路透社]

人工智能巨头 Anthropic 宣布在细菌 DNA 中发现了一种新的酶系统，该公司表示该系统可能“代表一种新的基因编辑机制”，类似于突破性的 CRISPR 工具。

Anthropic公司周三表示，其标志性人工智能模型Claude是在该公司最近在旧金山成立的生物学研究实验室的研究人员的提示下“自主”发现了该系统。

OpenAI和Anthropico的四位首席执行官在联合国呼吁制定全球人工智能监管条例（列表1/4）

（共4条）第2条：中国国家主席习近平访美，特朗普寄希望于稳定全球关系

土耳其同意逐步将巴希卡基地移交给伊拉克（共4项）

委内瑞拉总理德尔西·罗德里格斯在联合国承诺举行选举，但未给出具体日期（共4项承诺中的第4项）。委内瑞拉总理德尔西·罗德里格斯在联合国承诺举行选举，但未给出具体日期。

这家科技巨头表示，该系统展现出仅在少数其他“可编程”结构中发现的特征，并呈现出“类似于 CRISPR 的模式”，CRISPR 是一种在细菌中发现的基因组编辑机制。

CRISPR 技术被认为在治疗多种疾病方面取得了进展，包括镰状细胞病和癌症。

人工智能公司Anthropic正处于全球关于如何最大限度地发挥人工智能的益处并降低其灾难性风险的激烈辩论的中心。该公司表示，尚未确定该系统的功能。Anthropic称，克劳德在花费21个小时搜索一个大型DNA序列数据库后发现了该系统。

Anthropico公司首席执行官达里奥·阿莫迪曾声称人工智能可以在五到十年内治愈大多数疾病。他在X网站上发帖称，他的公司怀疑这种“分子机器”可能“代表了一种新的基因编辑机制”。他还表示，人工智能目前还处于“起步阶段”，未来可能取得的发现将带来医学突破。

“我真心希望所有前沿实验室都能认真投入生物学发现，我对最终的成果感到兴奋，”阿莫迪补充道。

斯坦福大学生物工程系副教授斯坦利·齐（Stanley Qi）称这一发现“令人无比兴奋”。

“最突出的是它能够识别以前难以发现的不寻常的生物模式，并将其作为一个研究问题进行全面研究，”齐告诉半岛电视台。

他说：“自然界包含着我们几乎一无所知的巨大分子系统多样性，有些模式非常复杂但意义重大；人工智能可以极大地扩展我们更有效、更快速地探索它们的能力，在这种情况下，只需 21 小时。”

然而，华盛顿大学医学院的微生物学家凯文·布莱克对这一声明的科学意义表示怀疑。

布莱克告诉半岛电视台：“由于所鉴定的阵列‘类似 CRISPR’，一些人就断定 Anthropic 发现了‘下一个 CRISPR’——即诺贝尔奖级别的基因编辑技术。”

布莱克说：“CRISPR技术与自然界中的CRISPR非常不同，自然界中的CRISPR本质上是细菌的免疫系统。人们早就知道，还有无数类似CRISPR的序列我们尚未识别和编目，因为我们尚未研究的细菌种类数以百万计。”

“没有任何迹象表明这项技术会与 CRISPR 技术相竞争，或者能够发展成任何类型的治疗或实际应用，”他补充道。

马克斯·普朗克病原体科学研究所的微生物学家埃玛纽埃尔·沙尔庞捷和加州大学伯克利分校的生物化学家詹妮弗·杜德纳率先利用天然存在的 CRISPR 系统编辑活体生物的 DNA，两人因此获得了 2020 年诺贝尔化学奖。

去年，美国费城儿童医院宣布，医生们首次使用定制的 CRISPR 基因编辑疗法治疗了一名患者。

医院称这是一项“历史性的”医学突破，研究人员开发了一种定制疗法，成功治疗了一名患有氨甲酰磷酸合成酶 1 缺乏症（一种罕见的代谢疾病）的婴儿。