Anthropic says Claude helped map first 3D structure of a bacterial vault particle

Anthropic's biology research team, working with Claude, found that vault-like proteins from bacteria and the viruses that infect them can assemble into vault particles—structures previously known only in animals and plants. Vault particles, discovered by Leonard Rome and Nancy Kedersha in 1986, remain functionally mysterious. The team says the simpler organisms may make their function easier to study. According to the author, Claude compressed weeks-to-months of manual structural work into days, though it made simple mistakes that required collaboration with ML researchers to fix. A preprint and full write-up are linked.

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