Gene synthesis companies establish measures to counter bioterrorism

The five largest suppliers of synthetic DNA will establish common measures to prevent misuse of synthetically produced DNA by bioterorrists or criminals. Yesterday, Blue Heron Biotechnology, DNA2.0, GENEART, GenScript and Integrated DNA Technologies, which together represent an 80% share of the synthetic DNA market, announced the establishment of a common screening protocol that will be applied to every single synthetic gene order. "We are proud to announce the formation of the International Gene Synthesis Consortium", said John Mulligan, CSO of Blue Heron Biotechnology.

The IGSC's "Harmonized Screening Protocol" is comprised of the screening of gene sequences against a regulated pathogen database developed by the consortium and one or more of the internationally coordinated sequence reference databanks, such as NCBI/GenBank, EBI/EMBL, or DDBJ. Amino acid sequences of possible translation products for each ordered synthetic gene will also be screened. Purchasers of synthetic genes will also be screened in accordance with national guidelines. Furthermore, the IGSC companies have agreed to keep all screening, customer, and order records for at least eight years. IGSC companies have also reserved the right to refuse to...