Claude Science tackles deadly scorpion stings by designing protein binders from scratch

The DecoderOct 21, 2026Oct 21, 2026, 4:37 AM AST

Proteins work by shape, and a small protein whose shape fits a toxin can block it. Working inside Anthropic's Claude Science environment, Claude generated 318,484 candidate binders for toxins from four scorpion species; of 211 tested in the lab, 17 met the criteria, with two attaching tightly to a Mexican scorpion toxin. Whether they protect patients is untested.

Summary written with AI by HowTechMoves, based on reporting by The Decoder.

All tech news

AI
The VergeOct 20, 2026
Google’s more personalized Gemini AI is heading to your car
Gemini in cars can now draw on your Gmail, Calendar, Maps, Photos, YouTube and Search, so you can ask about a flight and have it find the confirmation email and look up the status. Google turns this on only if you enable Personal Intelligence, answers are tailored only while your phone is connected, and the rollout starts with Android Auto.
Read original at The Verge (opens in a new tab)
AI
The DecoderOct 20, 2026
Mistral AI launches Voxtral 3, a full voice agent stack that listens, thinks, and talks in real time
A voice agent must hear you, decide what to say and reply fast enough to feel like a conversation. Mistral's Voxtral 3 bundles a speech-to-text model, a text-to-speech model and a developer kit built on LiveKit into one streaming pipeline, transcribes more than 50 languages, and lets agents call outside tools mid-call, on your own servers if you prefer.
Read original at The Decoder (opens in a new tab)
AI
The DecoderOct 20, 2026
OpenAI says GPT-6 is much better with legacy programming languages such as COBOL and Fortran
COBOL and Fortran are old languages with little public code to learn from, yet they still run much of banking and science software. OpenAI built tests that ask models to write a database engine in 20 languages and to translate COBOL into modern code; it says GPT-6 passes 87.4 percent of tests on average and reaches up to 97.9 percent accuracy on COBOL migration.
Read original at The Decoder (opens in a new tab)
AI
TechCrunchOct 20, 2026
Plants can speak using electricity, so this startup built an AI model to decipher their language
Plants send small voltage changes through living tissue when they need water, light or nutrients. A startup screws sensors into the layer under the bark to read those microvolt shifts, sends the readings over a low-power wireless link, and has a cloud model named Bombadil interpret them for about 125 species, so growers can adjust watering.
Read original at TechCrunch (opens in a new tab)

Related stories