U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Bioscience / Biosecurity

Nucleic acid sequence screening

Search Publications

Search Title, Abstract, Conference, Citation, Keyword or Author
Published Date
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9

Beyond Sequence Similarity: The Case for Function-Based Screening of Nucleic Acid Synthesis

May 13, 2026
Author(s)
Gary Able, Tessa Alexanian, Jacob Beal, James Diggans, Kevin Flyangolts, Gene D. Godbold, Eric Horvitz, Bin Hu, Caitlin Jagla, Rassin Lababidi, Brittany Rife Magalis, Sebastian Rivera, Bruce Wittmann, Samuel Forry, David Ross, Sheng Lin-Gibson, Samuel Curtis
Synthetic nucleic acids are a key input to modern biotechnology, yet they represent dual-use materials that require robust screening to mitigate biosecurity risks. The prevailing screening paradigm identifies sequences of concern (SoCs) through sequence

Parameterizing modified nucleic acids for molecular simulations in the AMBER MD software environment

January 6, 2026
Author(s)
Olivia Love, Rodrigo Galindo-Murillo, Daniel Roe, Pablo D. Dans, Thomas E. Cheatham III, Akanksha Manghrani, Christina Bergonzo
Parameterizing modified nucleic acids is a difficult but necessary task for expanding the simulated space of oligonucleotides, including both naturally occurring structures and those with pharmaceutical relevance. In lieu of expensive and difficult

Inter-tool analysis of a NIST dataset for assessing baseline nucleic acid sequence screening

July 10, 2025
Author(s)
Tyler Laird, Kevin Flyangolts, Craig Bartling, Bryan Gemler, Jacob Beal, Tom Mitchell, Steven T. Murphy, Jens Berlips, Leonard Foner, Ryan Doughty, Felix Qunitana, Michael Nute, Todd J. Treangen, Gene D. Godbold, Krista Ternus, Tessa Alexanian, Nicole Wheeler, Samuel Forry
Nucleic acid synthesis is a dual-use technology that can benefit fields such as biology, medicine, and information storage. However, synthetic nucleic acids could also potentially be used negligently and ultimately cause harm, or be used with malicious

Experimental Evaluation of AI-Driven Protein Design Risks Using Safe Biological Proxies

June 20, 2025
Author(s)
Svetlana Ikonomova, Bruce Wittmann, Fernanda Piorino Macruz de Oliveira, David Ross, Samuel Schaffter, Olga Vasilyeva, Elizabeth Strychalski, Eric Horvitz, James Diggans, Sheng Lin-Gibson, Geoffrey Taghon
Advances in machine learning are providing new abilities for engineering biology, promising leaps forward with beneficial applications. At the same time, these advances raise concerns about biosecurity. Recently, Wittmann et al. described an in silico

A Call for Built-In Biosecurity Safeguards for Generative AI Tools

April 28, 2025
Author(s)
Mengdi Wang, Zaixi Zhang, Amrit Singh Bedi, Alvaro Velasquez, Stephanie Guerra, Sheng Lin-Gibson, Le Cong, Megan Blewett, Yuanhao Qu, Jian Ma, Eric Xing, George Church, Souradip Chakraborty
The rapid adoption of generative AI (GenAI) in biotechnology offers immense potential but also raises serious safety concerns. AI models for protein engineering, genome editing, and molecular synthesis can be misused to enhance viral virulence, design

Cyberbiosecurity for biopharmaceutical products

February 8, 2021
Author(s)
Elizabeth Strychalski, Jennifer Mantla, Jayan Rammohan, Eugenia Romantseva, Reid D'Amico, Joel Welch, Leah R. Kauffman, Jim McCarthy, John E. Schiel, Jeffrey Baker, Kelley Rogers, Kelvin Lee
Was this page helpful?