On Thursday, a team of researchers led by Microsoft announced that they had discovered and possibly patched, what they call an organic zero-day-a non-recognized safety hole in a system that protects us against biological threats. The system that is at risk, screens purchases from DNA sequencies to determine when someone orders DNA that codes for a toxin or dangerous virus. But the researchers claim that it has become increasingly vulnerable to miss a new threat: toxins designed by AI.
How big is a threat? To understand, you need to know a little more about both existing biosurveillance programs and the possibilities of proteins designed by AI.
Bad
Organic threats come in various forms. Some are pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria. Others are protein -based toxins, such as the ricine that was sent to the White House in 2003. Still others are chemical toxins produced by enzymatic reactions, such as the molecules associated with red tide. They all start with the same fundamental biological process: DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is then used to make proteins.
Since a few decades, starting the process has been just as easy as ordering the required DNA sequence online from one of one of one of the companies that synthesize and ship a requested series. Recognizing the potential threat here, governments and the industry have worked together to add a screening step to each order: the DNA sequence is scanned for the ability to encode parts of proteins or viruses that are considered threats. Posals are then marked for human intervention to evaluate whether they or the people who order them are really a danger.
Both the list of proteins and the refinement of scanning have been constantly updated over the years in response to research output. For example, the first screening was done on the basis of parable -dna -sequences. But there are many DNA sequences that can cod the same protein, so the screening algorithms have been adjusted accordingly, so that all DNA variants are recognized that pose an identical threat.
