A system capable of verifiably and privately screening global DNA synthesis

ABSTRACT Printing custom DNA sequences is essential to scientific and biomedical research, but the technology can be used to manufacture plagues as well as cures. Just as ink printers recognize and reject attempts to counterfeit money, DNA synthesizers and assemblers should deny unauthorized requests to make viral DNA that could be misused. There are three complications. First, we do not need to quickly update printers to deal with newly discovered currencies, whereas we regularly learn of new potential pandemic viruses and other biological threats. Second, convincing counterfeit bills cannot be printed in small pieces and taped together, while preventing the distributed synthesis and subsequent re-assembly of controlled sequences will require tracking which DNA fragments have been ordered across all providers and benchtop devices while protecting legitimate customer privacy. Finally, counterfeiting can at worst undermine faith in currency, whereas unauthorized DNA synthesis could be used to deliberately cause pandemics. Here we describe SecureDNA, a free, privacy-preserving and fully automated system capable of verifiably screening all DNA synthesis orders of 30+ nucleotides against an up-to-date database of controlled sequences, and its operational performance and specificity when applied to 67 million nucleotides of DNA synthesized by providers in the USA, Europe and China.