Anthropic reported that its AI agents identified a previously undescribed enzyme system in bacteriophage genomic data. The system shares structural similarities with CRISPR, a known gene-editing technology. Following the announcement, shares of CRISPR Therapeutics and Editas Medicine experienced a decline.
The findings were published in a technical report on the company's blog rather than a peer-reviewed journal. Eric Kauderer-Abrams, head of biological research at Anthropic, acknowledged that the importance of the enzyme remains unknown and that the company intends to conduct further experiments to determine its function.
Experts, including researcher Lucas Harrington, expressed caution, noting that the results are preliminary and that understanding the system's mechanism is the most critical step. Critics pointed out that existing computational tools are already capable of identifying such enzymes.
The research team is led by Peter H. Yoon, a former researcher in the lab of Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna. Additionally, John Jumper, a Nobel Prize winner known for the AlphaFold protein structure prediction system, joined Anthropic from Google DeepMind in June.
