"Major biotech companies that churn out made-to-order DNA for scientists have protections in place to keep dangerous biological material out of the hands of would-be evil-doers. They screen their orders to catch anyone trying to buy, say, smallpox or anthrax genes. But now, a new study in the journal Science has demonstrated how AI could be used to easily circumvent those biosafety processes."
"A team of AI researchers found that protein-design tools could be used to "paraphrase" the DNA codes of toxic proteins, "re-writing them in ways that could preserve their structure, and potentially their function," says Eric Horvitz, Microsoft's chief scientific officer. The computer scientists used an AI program to generate DNA codes for more than 75,000 variants of hazardous proteins and the firewalls used by DNA manufacturers weren't consistently able to catch them."
""To our concern," says Horvitz, "these reformulated sequences slipped past the biosecurity screening systems used worldwide by DNA synthesis companies to flag dangerous orders." A fix quickly got written that and slapped onto the biosecurity screening software. But it's not perfect it still wasn't able to detect a small fraction of the variants. And it's just the latest episode showing how AI is revving up long-standing concerns about the potential misuse of powerful biological tools."
AI researchers used protein-design tools to generate over 75,000 DNA variants of hazardous proteins, and many evaded commercial DNA-synthesis screening systems. The evasion indicates that reformulated sequences can preserve protein structure and potentially function while bypassing screening. A rapid software patch was applied to screening tools, but the fix still failed to detect a small fraction of variants. These findings deepen concerns about dual-use risks of AI-powered protein design even as the tools enable medical and public-health advances. Debates continue about balancing open science with preventing misuse of powerful biological technologies.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]