Claude designed proteins that bind scorpion toxins: 17 of 211 tested variants worked in the lab
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
SI can already devise proteins for a specific dangerous target, and a team without biologists took the idea as far as testing; it is a long way from a medicine.
Anthropic asked an internal research Claude model to create minibinders — small proteins that attach tightly to a target — against scorpion neurotoxins; the prompt and four follow-ups were prepared together with the investment research firm Citrini Research. Teams at Adaptyv Bio and Twist Bioscience tested 211 variants in the lab, and 17 of them met the binding criteria. According to The Decoder, the model generated 318,484 variants, selected 180 itself, and researchers added another 31; the two best bound tightly to the toxin Cn2 of the Mexican scorpion. Whether this works as an antidote has not yet been tested. Anthropic is publishing all 211 variants and the data.
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