77 research outputs found
Conservation demands safe gene drive.
No full textInterest in developing gene drive systems to control invasive species is growing, with New Zealand reportedly considering the nascent technology as a way to locally eliminate the mammalian pests that threaten its unique flora and fauna. If gene drives successfully eradicated these invasive populations, many would rejoice, but what are the possible consequences? Here, we explore the risk of accidental spread posed by self-propagating gene drive technologies, highlight new gene drive designs that might achieve better outcomes, and explain why we need open and international discussions concerning a technology that could have global ramifications
Inoculating science against potential pandemics and information hazards.
No full textThe recent de novo assembly of horsepox is an instructive example of an information hazard: published methods enabling poxvirus synthesis led to media coverage spelling out the implications, efficiently disseminating true information that might be used to cause harm. Whether or not the benefits justified the risks, the horsepox saga provides ample reason to upgrade the current system for screening synthesized DNA for hazardous sequences, which does not cover the majority of firms and cannot reliably prevent the assembly of potentially pandemic pathogens. An upgraded system might leverage one-way encryption to confidentially scrutinize virtually all commercial production by a cooperative international network of servers whose integrity can be verified by third parties. Funders could support participating institutions to ease the transition or outright subsidize the market to make clean DNA cheaper, while boycotts by journals, institutions, and funders could ensure compliance and require hardware-level locks on future DNA synthesizers. However, the underlying problem is that security and safety discussions among experts typically follow potentially hazardous events rather than anticipating them. Changing norms and incentives to favor preregistration and advisory peer review of planned experiments could test alternatives to the current closeted research model in select areas of science. Because the fields of synthetic mammalian virology and especially gene drive research involve technologies that could be unilaterally deployed and may self-replicate in the wild, they are compelling candidates for initial trials of early-stage peer review
Sketch of a potential improved screening system for DNA synthesis orders.
No full textIterative hashing would enable companies to send out sequences to be screened externally while protecting trade secrets. Order fragments of approximately 40 bp could be screened for exact matches against a hashed database of hazardous sequences by a cooperative international network of servers verifiable by third parties. Orders and database could be kept private using uniquely salted local hashes plus a multiparty ball-and-chain, or possibly homomorphic encryption. Exact sequence comparison and the size of the sequence space relative to order volume could effectively eliminate false positives unless database salting is desired for improved security. Hazardous sequences could be filtered from crowdsourced suggestions by an international team of experts from synthesis companies, universities, and other institutions. Ideally, individual members could add new sequences privately to minimize information hazards.</p
Greater openness could accelerate progress and inoculate science against hazardous mistakes.
No full textCurrent incentives encourage scientists to keep research plans to themselves until publication (top), which prevents others from suggesting improvements. Fields such as gene drive have moral reasons to shift towards a fully open model (right) in which anyone can share advice, but this may not be practical for all fields due to commercial incentives and the risk of disclosing research plans that would themselves be information hazards. An intermediate model (left) might adapt current grant evaluation systems or national boards to ensure that proposed projects are confidentially preregistered and peer-reviewed by experts from diverse fields who lack conflicts of interest, enabling them to suggest ways of mitigating potential hazards in advance of experiments. This approach might be usefully pioneered by the field of synthetic mammalian virology. In both open models, early advice from peers would likely accelerate discovery relative to the current closeted approach.</p
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