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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/24\/science\/anthropic-biology-lab-enzyme.html?emc=edit_nn_20260925&nl=the-morning&segment_id=227047",
    "parsed_content": "Artificial IntelligenceA.I.-Driven Medical CostsU.S.-China RaceA.I. Hacking IncidentsTraining A.I. ModelsReader Questions, AnsweredAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTAnthropic\u2019s A.I. Is Teaching Itself Biology. Now It\u2019s Made Its First Discovery.Scientists at the company announced their first finding: a group of enzymes whose function is unknown. Listen \u00b7 6:46 min Share full articleAnthropic\u2019s San Francisco headquarters.Credit...Jason Henry\/BloombergBy Carl ZimmerSept. 24, 2026Sign up for Science Times Get stories that capture the wonders of nature, the cosmos and the human body. Get it sent to your inbox.Biologists at Anthropic announced on Wednesday that they had used artificial intelligence to identify genes in viruses that produce enzymes that work in a new way, the first discovery emanating from a research lab the company opened this spring.\u201cWe have chosen biology and medicine as the primary way that we believe the benefits from A.I. can come about,\u201d said Eric Kauderer-Abrams, the head of life sciences at Anthropic.Dr. Kauderer-Abrams and his colleagues described their work in a technical report posted on the company\u2019s website. The results have not yet been submitted to a scientific journal for publication.Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, saw great potential in the finding. \u201cToday we announced the Claude-led discovery of a molecular machine that we suspect could represent a new gene editing mechanism,\u201d he wrote on X on Wednesday.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTOutside experts said that such claims jumped far ahead of the evidence the team has gathered so far.\u201cIt\u2019s not yet a breakthrough,\u201d said Philip Kranzusch, a microbiologist at Harvard Medical School. \u201cIt\u2019s a wrinkle on what we know in the field.\u201dAnthropic\u2019s foray into biology comes amid intense controversy about the safety of A.I. Earlier this month, Anthropic reported potentially dangerous uses of its models, including queries that could potentially assist people in building biological weapons.Two days after that announcement, Dr. Amodei called for slowing development so that humanity can enjoy the benefits of A.I. without risking catastrophe.Dr. Amodei, who has a Ph.D. in biophysics, has long argued that one of those benefits will be new treatments for diseases. \u201cThe first step is showing that AI can first help with, and then drive, biological discoveries,\u201d he wrote on X.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIn hopes of safely demonstrating that, Anthropic opened up a biology lab earlier this year, as first reported last week by Reuters.\u201cOur team is still relatively small, but we are growing very rapidly,\u201d said Dr. Kauderer-Abrams. \u201cThis is one of the most significant investment areas for the company.\u201dAnthropic is far from the first organization to use artificial intelligence to probe biology. A number of academic labs and start-ups are training A.I. models to discover hidden molecular machines, design new proteins or even predict how entire cells will respond to drugs.Dr. Kauderer-Adams and his colleagues are using Anthropic\u2019s own products, such as the large language model Mythos and Claude Code, which writes computer programs on demand.In the new report, Anthropic\u2019s biologists describe their search for enzymes, called reverse transcriptases. These enzymes can read the sequence in an RNA molecule and produce a matching piece of DNA.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTViruses and bacteria make reverse transcriptases for many purposes, and scientists have found them to be powerful tools. One type of Covid test, for example, uses reverse transcriptases to detect the coronavirus. Scientists have also harnessed the enzymes to develop new ways to edit genes.As promising as these enzymes are, however, scientists have barely begun to document their diversity in the natural world. Dr. Kauderer-Adams and his colleagues created A.I. agents to search through databases of viral and bacterial genes in search of new reverse transcriptases.The agents wrote their own programs to examine genes that serve as blueprints for 1.9 billion kinds of proteins. They searched for molecular patterns that were similar to known reverse transcriptases, along with the proteins and RNA molecules that help the enzymes do their job.VideoThe raw DNA sequences that Claude was reading when it detected a repeat pattern.CreditCredit...AnthropicThe search yielded a list of 17 possible reverse transcriptases, but 14 turned out to be errors. In some cases, they were not new. In other cases, they were not reverse transcriptases at all. But the remaining three held up to scrutiny.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe researchers claim that one of the new kinds works very differently from previously discovered ones.The enzymes, which the scientists call array-associated reverse transcriptases, are carried by viruses. They are produced along with a set of RNA molecules that appear to work with them in some way.But outside experts said that the Anthropic researchers have yet to do the research required to confirm that they\u2019ve found something new.Yuzhen Ye, a computational biologist at Indiana University, said that the researchers should have tested their hypothesis by using software created specifically to analyze reverse transcriptase genes.\u201cI think we should be a little more careful before jumping to something being a new discovery,\u201d Dr. Ye said.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTDr. Kranzusch also observed that the Anthropic report describes little wet-lab work on real molecules. The researchers should run more experiments, he said, such as deleting the gene for an array-associated reverse transcriptase from viruses to see how they change.\u201cThis would be the first stage in dissertation research,\u201d Dr. Kranzusch said. \u201cThey\u2019ve published a really exciting beginning, but it\u2019s the beginning of a story, not a complete unit that we typically see in the field.\u201dNicholas Perry, an Anthropic biologist, said that he and his colleagues are now going \u201cto try to figure out what exactly these systems are doing in the natural world.\u201dFor Dr. Kauderer-Abrams, one of the most revealing insights was not about enzymes, but about the capacity that A.I. has to perform science. \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of debate about whether A.I. can have creativity, or is it only good at just executing on instructions,\u201d he said.Dr. Kauderer-Abrams saw evidence of scientific creativity in the transcripts that the agents generated as they carried out their assignments.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTWhen an agent inspected array-associated reverse transcriptases, it initially determined that they were not something worth examining. But then it flagged the RNA molecules that accompanied the proteins, which were peculiar enough to warrant a second look.\u201cYou can see the agent say, \u2018Huh, that\u2019s interesting,\u2019\u201d Dr. Kauderer-Abrams said.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
    "published_at": "2026-09-24T17:08:53+00:00",
    "author_name": "Carl Zimmer",
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    "ai_headline": "Anthropic\u2019s A.I. Is Teaching Itself Biology. Now It\u2019s Made Its First Discovery.",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Anthropic AI Discovers New Enzymes in Biology Lab",
    "ai_excerpt": "Anthropic's AI has identified a new group of enzymes in viruses, marking the first discovery from the company's new biology lab. While Anthropic hails it as a breakthrough, outside experts urge caution, noting more research is needed to confirm the findings.",
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