Feng Zhang is a professor at MIT and the Broad Institute, described by Anthropic as "one of the pioneers of CRISPR genome editing" (Source: anthropic.com).
Comment on the ART preprint
Anthropic's September 23, 2026 announcement states that Zhang reviewed its preprint on array-associated reverse transcriptases before release and quotes him: "This is an exciting example of how AI agents can contribute to biological discovery. The identification of RNA-repeat arrays associated with reverse transcriptases is genuinely intriguing and merits further investigation. I hope this work encourages more scientists to explore how AI can support their research" (Source: anthropic.com). The preprint's acknowledgments list "F. Zhang" among four people who reviewed an early copy of the manuscript (Autonomous AI agents discover reverse transcriptases with tandem repeat arrays (Yoon et al., Anthropic, September 2026)). The comment is an assessment of the finding's interest, made at Anthropic's invitation before publication, and is not an independent replication of the result.
Zhang's laboratory is also cited in the preprint's own record of what the discovering agent considered: a 2024 paper from his group on a phage-triggered reverse transcriptase that assembles a repetitive gene from a non-coding RNA is among the works the agent weighed when testing whether the repeat array it had found was already described.
Relationships
- related: Autonomous AI agents discover reverse transcriptases with tandem repeat arrays (Yoon et al., Anthropic, September 2026) — reviewed the preprint and is quoted on it.
- related: Anthropic — the company that solicited and published the comment.
- related: AI for Science.