‘Anonymous’ genetic databases vulnerable to privacy leaks

A study has raised concerns that a type of genetic database that is increasingly popular with researchers could be exploited to reveal the identities of its participants, or link private health information to their public genetic profiles.

Single-cell data sets can contain information on gene expression in millions of cells collected from thousands of people. They are often freely accessible, providing a valuable resource for researchers who study the effects of diseases at a cellular level. The data are supposed to be anonymized, but a study published on 2 October in Cell¹ shows how genetic data from one study “can be exploited to uncover private information about individuals in another study”, the authors write.

The findings highlight the difficulty of balancing the interests of researchers with the privacy of donors. “Our genomes are very identifying. They can tell a lot about us, our traits, our predisposition to diseases,” says study co-author Gamze Gürsoy, a bioinformatics researcher at Columbia University in New York City. “You can change your credit-card number if it leaks, but you cannot change your genome.”

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