More regulation is needed to prevent malicious actors from buying DNA online and using it to fabricate dangerous pathogens, experts have warned.
DNA – the building blocks of life – can be easily produced in laboratories and sold for all manner of purposes, from academic research through to vaccine development.
However, it’s estimated that one in five suppliers globally don’t check the code they create or those ordering it – meaning they won’t know if they’re handing over DNA for dangerous pathogens to rogue buyers.
“At the moment, it would be relatively easy for a malicious actor to go and find a provider that isn’t screening,” said Piers Millett, the executive director of the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS), a new project dedicated to strengthening biosecurity.
“We know from Interpol that there are malicious actors around the world who do try and acquire that biology to cause deliberate harm,” he added.
IBBIS was launched on Thursday by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a NGO committed to reducing nuclear and biological threats, at the Munich Security Conference.
It will be based out of Geneva and collaborate with governments, international organisations, industry and academia to develop tools for reducing risks in bioscience and biotechnology.
One such tool is already live: the so-called ‘Common Mechanism’ is a free-to-use software system that can be installed by suppliers and screens DNA orders to ensure that the genetic building blocks of high-risk pathogens do not fall into the wrong hands.
“The database itself is checking, ‘does this sequence likely come from a dangerous pathogen?,’” Mr Millett said.
“We can look in some public databases and say, ‘Yes, the sequence being ordered is actually known to be an important part of causing this disease or making that toxin.’
“The hope is that no matter where in the world you’re making DNA, you’ll be able to screen the orders and understand what hazards may be associated [with them], and put in place procedures [to avoid them].”
‘We don’t really know who is making DNA’
It is estimated the global DNA sequencing market will be worth $44 billion by 2030.
Since the completion of the Human Genome Project, technological advancements and improvements have gained speed and lowered costs to a point where some labs can sequence over 100 trillion DNA bases per year.
DNA providers who belong to the International Gene Synthesis Consortium voluntarily screen synthesis orders and customers, but these companies only represent an estimated 80 per cent of the global DNA synthesis market share.
That means 20 per cent of orders are likely going unscreened, according to IBBIS.
Greater transparency is needed in the industry, Mr Mallet said, adding that, outside of Europe and North America, “we don’t really know who is making DNA. We’re working with partners in different parts of the world to get a better understanding of that.”
He highlighted China as an example. Just one Chinese DNA provider is signed up to the International Gene Synthesis Consortium, Mr Mallet explained, but “anecdotally, I know there’s big demand in China for synthetic DNA. And I also know that there’s plenty of companies there that have been meeting this demand domestically.”
Professor Stuart Neil, a virologist at King’s College London, said there was a genuine “worry” around DNA providers inadvertently providing “larger DNA chunks to allow the reconstruction of a pathogen”.
“This became an issue after 9/11 when Eckard Wimmer [an American scientist] ordered DNA fragments and stitched together polio in the lab to show it could be done.”
However, he said, most companies that synthesise DNA “routinely screen their orders and flag them to ensure the orderers are legit”. Intelligence services will also be alerted in some instances, he suggested.
The UK does not have any commercial DNA synthesis capacity, meaning British academics and pharmaceuticals are dependent on overseas suppliers.
“We have to order from abroad which massively slows us down, particularly since Brexit, on all forms of biological research,” Prof Neil said.
Mr Mallet said that although IBBIS endeavours to put guard rails around biotechnology and DNA synthesis, “it’s important that it doesn’t stop the sorts of science and research that we’re going to need to solve the big challenges. We can’t impede legitimate science.”
He added: “What we do want to do is to raise that barrier so that those doing illegitimate things, those who want to be causing harm, or they want sequences for nefarious orders, find it that much more difficult to be able to get them.”
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