Anthropic says Claude found a new enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats

Anthropic’s Claude discovered a new enzyme system in bacteriophage DNA, named array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART). The system includes a reverse transcriptase gene, an adjacent partner gene, and 3–21 short DNA repeats that generate distinct RNAs. These RNAs comprised up to 8% of a Staphylococcus phage transcriptome 15 minutes post-infection. The ART array lacks cas genes, the enzyme’s activity on the RNAs is untested, and only a few known systems share these characteristics.