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The big gene synthesis companies are all a part of the international gene synthesis consortium, which has loose set of guidelines that include gene sequence scr

by Cixelyn 14y ago

The big gene synthesis companies are all a part of the international gene synthesis consortium, which has loose set of guidelines that include gene sequence screening (eg: every order is screened against a database of known pathogens, toxins, viruses, etc.). granted this is a hard problem (similar to the difficulty of fingerprinting computer viruses). So while synthesis prices are still relatively high, simple fingerprinting will probably suffice for now. There will probably be a lot of development of more advanced machine learning algorithms to detect dangerous sequences as it becomes more and more of a threat in the future.

jsmcgd 14y ago
It's good to know that some thought and consideration has gone into safety. Though this does just seem like a temporary measure that will keep the white hats in check. The goals of a lot of these companies is democratization. Would you agree that all the steps of the organism creation process will (in short order) be achievable in private, for good and for ill? Personally I do think we will need some sort of active technology for protection and we shouldn't put much stock in the efficacy of legislation. We haven't been able to legislate away criminals, and we only need one criminal/virus live in the population to do an inordinate amount of damage.
- kanzure 14y ago
  > and we only need one criminal/virus live in the population to do an inordinate amount of damage. Those already exist. This is why you get sick and die. Welcome to the exciting career of medicine.
kanzure 14y ago
> The big gene synthesis companies are all a part of the international gene synthesis consortium Yes, they screen against one of the UK's lists of unauthorized individuals. At least, this was according to Howard Simon (dna20) when he mentioned it at the FBI/DIYbio workshop. I was curious to see if anyone from DIYbio was on this list, so I did what any self-respecting hacker would do and wrote up some quick code to check... here's the details: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/zarj-c5I9bs/UJ3zAotVKtIJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/zarj-c5I9bs/UJ3zAotVK... The good news is that nobody from the amateur communities seem to be on that list of excluded individuals for synthetic DNA. disclaimer: I like to pretend I am working on an open-source microfluidic DNA synthesizer, which negates all their efforts and warps my perspective.

by Cixelyn 14y ago

jsmcgd 14y ago

It's good to know that some thought and consideration has gone into safety. Though this does just seem like a temporary measure that will keep the white hats in check. The goals of a lot of these companies is democratization. Would you agree that all the steps of the organism creation process will (in short order) be achievable in private, for good and for ill? Personally I do think we will need some sort of active technology for protection and we shouldn't put much stock in the efficacy of legislation. We haven't been able to legislate away criminals, and we only need one criminal/virus live in the population to do an inordinate amount of damage.

kanzure 14y ago
> and we only need one criminal/virus live in the population to do an inordinate amount of damage. Those already exist. This is why you get sick and die. Welcome to the exciting career of medicine.

kanzure 14y ago

> The big gene synthesis companies are all a part of the international gene synthesis consortium Yes, they screen against one of the UK's lists of unauthorized individuals. At least, this was according to Howard Simon (dna20) when he mentioned it at the FBI/DIYbio workshop. I was curious to see if anyone from DIYbio was on this list, so I did what any self-respecting hacker would do and wrote up some quick code to check... here's the details: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/zarj-c5I9bs/UJ3zAotVKtIJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/zarj-c5I9bs/UJ3zAotVK... The good news is that nobody from the amateur communities seem to be on that list of excluded individuals for synthetic DNA. disclaimer: I like to pretend I am working on an open-source microfluidic DNA synthesizer, which negates all their efforts and warps my perspective.