Anthropic Says Its Claude AI Autonomously Discovered a CRISPR-Like Gene Editing System

Key facts

• Anthropic announced on 24 September 2026 that its AI model Claude autonomously discovered a new enzyme system in bacterial DNA that could represent a new gene editing mechanism similar to CRISPR.
• Claude made the discovery at the prompting of researchers at Anthropic's recently established biology research lab in San Francisco, after spending 21 hours searching a large database of DNA sequences.
• The system displayed a pattern reminiscent of CRISPR, but Anthropic said it has not yet determined the function of the system.
• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company suspects the molecular machine could represent a new gene editing mechanism.
• CRISPR gene editing was pioneered by Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens and Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia announced that doctors treated an infant born with carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 deficiency, a rare metabolic disease, using a customised CRISPR gene-editing therapy for the first time.