Methods for safely sharing dual-use genetic data.

Area of Science:

• Genomics
• Bioinformatics
• Data Security

Background:

• Genetic data, particularly pathogen sequences, has dual-use potential, posing risks for malicious use.
• Sharing pathogen data is crucial for research (e.g., therapeutic development, lineage tracking) but challenging due to security concerns.
• Current data security methods are insufficient for controlling sensitive genetic data shared internationally.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop novel methods for secure storage and sharing of genetic data with dual-use potential.
• To obscure sensitive genomic information while retaining utility for research.

Main Methods:

• Obfuscating raw sequence data by pooling reads from multiple samples of the same organism.
• Demonstrating that pooled data prevents full reconstruction of individual samples.
• Optionally removing specific genomic regions from reads to further restrict information.

Main Results:

• Pooled sequence data retains broad genomic information but prevents attribution of reads or mutations to individual samples.
• The proposed method effectively obscures fine-scale details, making individual sample reconstruction difficult or impossible.
• The developed software is publicly available for use.

Conclusions:

• The developed methods obscure genomic information, enabling secure storage and sharing of dual-use genetic data.
• This approach mitigates the risk of malicious reconstruction of organisms from shared data.
• Secure sharing of pathogen genomic data can be achieved without compromising broad research utility.