The biosecurity benefits of genetic engineering attribution
Name
s41467-020-19149-2.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
498.2 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
a92b1fef65442cc44d4571f4baba4ae2
Author(s)
Lewis, Gregory
Jordan, Jacob L
Relman, David A
Koblentz, Gregory D
Leung, Jade
Dafoe, Allan
Nelson, Cassidy
Epstein, Gerald L
Katz, Rebecca
Montague, Michael
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2020, The Author(s). Biology can be misused, and the risk of this causing widespread harm increases in step with the rapid march of technological progress. A key security challenge involves attribution: determining, in the wake of a human-caused biological event, who was responsible. Recent scientific developments have demonstrated a capability for detecting whether an organism involved in such an event has been genetically modified and, if modified, to infer from its genetic sequence its likely lab of origin. We believe this technique could be developed into powerful forensic tools to aid the attribution of outbreaks caused by genetically engineered pathogens, and thus protect against the potential misuse of synthetic biology.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19149-2
