Biologists at Anthropic announced on Wednesday that they had used artificial intelligence to identify genes in viruses that produce enzymes that work in a new way, the first discovery emanating from a research lab the company opened this spring.

“We have chosen biology and medicine as the primary way that we believe the benefits from A.I. can come about,” said Eric Kauderer-Abrams, the head of life sciences at Anthropic. Dario Amodei, the chief executive, saw great potential. “Today we announced the Claude-led discovery of a molecular machine that we suspect could represent a new gene editing mechanism,” he wrote on X.

Outside experts urged caution. “It’s not yet a breakthrough,” said Philip Kranzusch, a microbiologist at Harvard Medical School. “It’s a wrinkle on what we know in the field.” Anthropic’s foray into biology comes amid controversy about A.I. safety. Earlier this month, Anthropic reported potentially dangerous uses of its models, including queries that could assist in building biological weapons.

Anthropic’s biologists searched for reverse transcriptases through databases of viral and bacterial genes, examining blueprints for 1.9 billion kinds of proteins. The search yielded 17 possible enzymes, but 14 turned out to be errors.