The DNA synthesis industry has, since the invention of gene-length synthesis, worked proactively to ensure synthesis is carried out securely and safely. Informed by guidance from the U.S. government, several of these companies have collaborated over the last decade to produce a set of best practices for customer and sequence screening prior to manufacture. Taken together, these practices ensure that synthetic DNA is used to advance research that is designed and intended for public benefit. With increasing scale in the industry and expanding capability in the synthetic biology toolset, it is worth revisiting current practices to evaluate additional measures to ensure the continued safety and wide availability of DNA synthesis. Here we encourage specific steps, in part derived from successes in the cybersecurity community, that can ensure synthesis screening systems stay well ahead of emerging challenges, to continue to enable responsible research advances. Gene synthesis companies, science and technology funders, policymakers, and the scientific community as a whole have a shared duty to continue to minimize risk and maximize the safety and security of DNA synthesis to further power world-changing developments in advanced biological manufacturing, agriculture, drug development, healthcare, and energy.
[1]
Lior Pachter,et al.
Near-optimal probabilistic RNA-seq quantification
,
2016,
Nature Biotechnology.
[2]
D. KoblentzGregory.
The De Novo Synthesis of Horsepox Virus: Implications for Biosecurity and Recommendations for Preventing the Reemergence of Smallpox
,
2017
.
[3]
Cyrus Rashtchian,et al.
Scaling up DNA data storage and random access retrieval
,
2017,
bioRxiv.
[4]
Sonia Farhana Nimmy,et al.
Next generation sequencing under de novo genome assembly
,
2015
.
[5]
Angus M. Sidore,et al.
Multiplexed gene synthesis in emulsions for exploring protein functional landscapes
,
2017,
Science.
[6]
M. Harman,et al.
Regression testing minimization, selection and prioritization: a survey
,
2012
.
[7]
K. Esvelt.
Inoculating science against potential pandemics and information hazards
,
2018,
PLoS pathogens.
[8]
Dhundy Bastola,et al.
Alignment-free genetic sequence comparisons: a review of recent approaches by word analysis
,
2014,
Briefings Bioinform..
[9]
Paul Gamble,et al.
SIG-DB: Leveraging homomorphic encryption to securely interrogate privately held genomic databases
,
2018,
PLoS Comput. Biol..