Genetic Privacy

How private is private? A study published on 17 January reveals vulnerabilities in the security of public databases that contain genetic data, the latest in a series of similar revelations. So far, research funders that host the databases have responded to such problems on a case-by-case basis, but it is now clear that the research community as a whole must devise a more comprehensive approach.

In the latest study, led by Yaniv Erlich at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts (M. Gymrek et al. Science 339, 321–324; 2013), researchers showed that they could discover the identity of some men whose genomes had been sequenced as part of a genomics project (see Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature.2013.12237; 2013). Erlich’s team wrote an algorithm that infers an individual’s pattern (a haplotype) of genetic markers called short tandem repeats from the nucleotide sequence of his Y chromosome. The team then searched genealogical databases for the names of men with corresponding Y-chromosome haplotypes. The team confirmed the correct names by cross-referencing the possible last names with public records of people of...