DNA cops make sure deadly viruses don’t get rebuilt

Genetic engineering could help produce more resilient crops and more effective vaccines. Some fear that it could also be used to make a biological weapon.

In January, a small research team at the University of Alberta engineered a cousin of the lethal smallpox virus called horsepox, using strands of DNA they received in the mail. The organism that they built wasn’t a threat to humans.

But when the scientists published their findings in scientific journal PLOS ONE, an uproar ensued.

The study’s publication “crosses a red line in the field of biosecurity,” wrote Gregory Koblentz, a professor in the biodefense department at George Mason University, in a public comment to the journal. “The synthesis of horsepox virus takes the world one step closer to the reemergence of smallpox as a threat to global health security.”

Smallpox was eradicated by 1980, after generations of research and immunization; many Americans born before 1972 have smallpox vaccination scars. The disease, which once killed about a third of the people it infected, is considered so dangerous that only two laboratories in the world – one at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and one in Siberia – are permitted by the World Health Organization to store samples of it.

For years, bioethicists and security experts have debated whether those closely guarded samples should be destroyed. But the widespread availability of the basic building blocks of life online means bad actors may not have to break into a remote lab and steal a smallpox virus sample to unleash a devastating act of biological terrorism. They may be able to assemble it themselves.

To help curtail the threat, the U.S. intelligence community, which has been tracking the potential for new biological technology to be used for nefarious ends for years, is working with a Boston-based company, Ginkgo Bioworks, that makes some of the most innovative genetic products in the world to help prevent a new class of dangerous biological weapons from ever being built.

Using a technology called synthetic biology, a marriage of biology and engineering that allows researchers to construct genes in a lab, a scientist could theoretically make present-day illnesses more virulent or drug-resistant, or revive long-eradicated ailments such as bubonic plague or the Spanish flu.

To be sure, reawakening dormant diseases currently requires significant scientific expertise and laboratory resources. However, the pace of innovation is quickening.

In June 2017, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a technology-research agency within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, launched a program that it hopes will help keep cutting-edge biological technology away from bad actors.

The program is designed to create advanced algorithms that could flag and prevent harmful DNA orders from being completed.

Asha George, executive director of the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, said it’s a good sign that IARPA is getting involved before synthetic-biology technology becomes more widespread. She said biosecurity issues don’t receive the attention and resources they merit.

“The amount of effort we’re still putting toward the nuclear threat, the chemical threat, the incendiary threat is so much more than the United States government-or any government, for that matter-is putting towards bio-preparedness, that’s just a fact,” she said.