Defending Synthetic DNA Orders Against Splitting-Based Obfuscation
Tayouri, S.; Kogan, V.; Beal, J.; Levy, T.; Farbiash, D.; Flyangolts, K.; Mitchell, T.; Murphy, S. T.; Rotblat, B.; Veksler-Lublinsky, I.; Puzis, R.
Show abstract
Biosecurity screening of synthetic DNA orders is a key defense against malicious actors and careless enthusiasts producing dangerous pathogens or toxins. It is important to evaluate biosecurity screening tools for potential vulnerabilities and to work responsibly with providers to ensure that vulnerabilities can be patched before being publicly disclosed. Here, we consider a class of potential vulnerabilities in which a DNA sequence is obfuscated by splitting it into two or more fragments that can be readily joined via routine biological mechanisms such as restriction enzyme digestion or splicing. We evaluated this potential vulnerability by developing a test set of obfuscated sequences based on controlled venoms, sharing these materials with the biosecurity screening community, and collecting test results from open source and commercial biosecurity screening tools, as well as a novel Gene Edit Distance algorithm specifically designed to be robust against splitting-based obfuscations.
Matching journals
The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
- Sample pooling methods for efficient pathogen screening: Practical implications 94%
- DeLUCS: Deep Learning for Unsupervised Clustering of DNA Sequences 93%
- Countering reproducibility issues in mathematical models with software engineering techniques: A case study using a one-dimensional mathematical model of the atrioventricular node 92%
Similar papers in this journal
"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.