Real_S

The proposal can be found here:

https://www.tillis.senate.gov/services/files/E8ED2188-DC15-4...

Relevant quote: "No implicit or other judicially created exceptions to subject matter eligibility, including “abstract ideas,” “laws of nature,” or “natural phenomena,” shall be used to determine patent eligibility under section 101, and all cases establishing or interpreting those exceptions to eligibility are hereby abrogated."

Books by Yasser Seirawan helped me when I was at a similar level. Winning Chess Brilliancies has some very good insight into some of the best grandmaster games.

Genetic data can be used to identify you, so although this trick may provide some obfuscation, ultimately it would place your identifiable information in the data base.

And if a close family member is in that data base, you would be identified immediately.

Excellent talk!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY

I believe this was the author's intent:

Socks are seen by most as a terrible gift. Hence [terrible gift] makes a better gift than a DNA test.

Genetic information is probably the most valuable information about you. Your fears are well founded, but the threat matrix is growing and the sci-fi-like threats around genetic data that we will face in 10, 20, 30 years can only be imagined.

For that reason, my company seeks to apply cryptography to DNA molecules. This helps avoid insider threats and hardware backdoors. We hope that our tech will be used by multiple service providers to allow you to have complete control over your genetic data security. More info at geneinfosec.com

With unique molecular tags, random mutation and PCR, various cryptographic methods can be applied. But random mutation and PCR are not necessary for some relatively simple use cases. Reversible mutation is not used, but the information concealed through mutation is recoverable with the decryption keys.

At GeneInfoSec we are working on a method that will allow all sequencing services to encrypt DNA molecules themselves. With this molecular encryption even your sequencing service will not have access to your genetic data.

This will be a huge. As bad as I will feel for the victims, I hope that it causes us to take genetic information security seriously.

Your family only shares part of your genome. Even if you have full sequence data on both parents, you don't have anything near full information about the child. With siblings you would have less information, and the information gained from distant relatives becomes astonishingly small the farther you go. Don't assume that your DNA is fully compromised just because someone in your family has surrendered it.

I work to apply encryption directly to DNA molecules, the Fort Knox of DNA data security ;)

>You won't be able to name a single case of active harm caused by disclosure or sharing of genetic information. The worst thing that is possible is to learn your family isn't what you expected it to be.

There are many reasons to keep DNA private, it gets much worse than just family surprises. Your DNA is yours for the rest of your life, so even if there are no current threats (which there are to some), there may be threats in the future. Please watch this video if you are interested in learning more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY

HIPAA is miles away from protecting DNA. GDPR, however, does cover genetic data.

> Dna samples should sort of be viewed as banking information.

Actually, because your DNA is yours for life it should be kept far MORE secure than your banking information. You can always change your bank account!

To your other points, this is already being attempted in some countries. Imagine getting a bad "social credit" score because you were born with DNA unfavorable to your government.

So I guess then we might as well just post it online for everyone to see at the click of a button! Someone could also follow you around or put a GPS tracker on your car, so why not just post our GPS data online while we're at it. /s

Genetic data security is a real problem, and making it difficult to obtain this sensitive information has real value.

More on this here: https://globalnews.ca/news/5132802/dna-test-cancer-screening...

Definitely a scam of some sort, but where does the data go?

One reason health data is so valuable is that the older you are, the more problems you have. For example, neurodegenerative diseases can be serious, and when they begin to develop the patient may still be working! Imagine if your boss found out that you had ~2 good years left.

Even worse, people with dementia are prone to being scammed. We need to do everything possible to stop adversaries and scammers from having a list of people with neurodegenerative disease. Unfortunately, most people have little fear of their health data being hacked and hospitals have little incentive to protect it. Although I hear things are "getting better," the protection of you health data remains in a terrible state.

I agree with most of the comments made so far, that this article is terribly written and generally uninformative. Nevertheless, I believe that the author in primarily trying to convey that "genes" themselves are far less important that science used to think they were. Although this isn't huge news to geneticists, it may be to some.

However, if this is the intended message of this article, much of his writing is, at best, slightly off topic. Even though the protein coding regions of the genome are far less important than we first believed, that does not mean that genetic heritability is necessarily unimportant. I would have loved to see a discussion about the heritability caused by non-protein regions of the genome. Maybe another time...

This depends entirely on the population. Rare individuals with unique DNA markers are easier to re-ID than individuals with more common DNA markers.

But also consider that ethnicity is relatively easy to get from genetic data. So individuals with unique ethnic combinations can be trivial to identify by their genetic data. Now consider that genetic data can also be used to predict traits such as height, hair color, eye color, etc [0].

Reliable triangulation is already possible, and becomes increasingly more accurate as more data becomes available.

0: E.g.this company- https://snapshot.parabon-nanolabs.com/

This is a common misconception, but you are incorrect. These data can be used to identify you, therefore they are not anonymous. If a name is removed from a file that contains zip-code, age and gender, that data is nevertheless sufficient to re-identify most people. Removing a name from a data-base does not necessarily anonymize that data-base.

DNA can be used to uncover your last name and ethnicity, estimate your height, hair color, eye color and more, so anonymization is not as simple as removing a name.

There is no reason to think that they are not sequencing some of these samples in their research programs, and/or waiting for sequencing to become cheap enough to do so. Considering that there are numerous large GWAS studies around, why would pharma pay big money for access to this data if it were limited to GWAS? They might currently only sequence specific genes and/or specific individuals, guided by the GWAS data, but as sequencing gets cheaper there is nothing stopping them from full genome sequencing in their research.

Their prices are low for the "consumer" (product). The $300 million GSK deal is an example of how they can make real money.

Great question! I am working on a method to anonymize DNA, applying cryptography at the molecular level [0].

Regarding the statement in the article about anonymization, you are correct. These data are not anonymized, your name is just removed from the file. This does not truly anonymize the data, for reasons you outlined.

Interesting quote from Linda Avey, the co-founder of 23andMe: “It’s a fallacy to think that genomic data can be fully anonymized”[1]. I disagree, and think that eventually we will be able to anonymize your genome in a test-tube, so that the data is secure before it ever touches a computer.

0: https://geneinfosec.com 1: https://undark.org/article/dna-ancestry-sharing-privacy-23an...

Recruiting people for drug trials seems unlikely to be a goal, but I could be surprised. I suspect they are planning to use sequence data to find drug targets. Sequence data has more potential than GWAS ever had, e.g. finding rare mutations.

"Blinded to patient identity" is true, but it can be relatively easy to re-identify these individuals using this data. So this data has your identity intertwined with potentially very private information. Some people intuitively desire to be as cautious as possible with their genetic information, and there is good reason for caution. Worst case it somehow ends up on the black market. You can't change your DNA, so if it gets out, there is no turning back.

The "cut-and-paste" analogy is perfect here. Imagine you discover super-complex code for which you have only a rudimentary understanding. Now imagine replacing sections of code from one program with sections from another program and calling it an improvement before even testing the code!

Older versions of genetic engineering are like pasting code into a random section of a program. CRISPER-CAS9 is more like replacing one section of code with another. Better? Sure. But we still dont really understand the system.

I really like how this article was written. This is often hyped as the $100 genome sequence, but as the article frames it, its more of a genetic map for $100.

Very promising tech, but we still have a ways to go before the $100 full-genome sequence. Until then, genome-wide mapping for $100 will lead us to further breakthroughs.

Just because sensitive information can be compromised doesn't mean that it should be offered freely. Yes, someone can target you and collect a DNA sample, but does that mean you shouldn't care how securely your genetic data is used and stored?

[2] wont work on a whole genome because of the many differences present between mammals after millions of years of evolution. The "alignment" of a small sequence may be confused between human and mouse, but not longer sequences and definitely not whole genomes (alignment using a tool like BLAST or BLAT).

I wrote a summary of genetic information discussing this very idea. See the PDF under "What is Genetic Info?", read the Phylogenetics section:

https://www.geneinfosec.com/more-info/

Maybe not exactly something you can do right now, but my invention of molecular cryptography will allow genomes to be sequenced without revealing identity or health information. You are somewhat close with [3]

geneinfosec.com

Also note that DNA is readily identifiable, so misidentifying yourself does not work.

This reminds me of the calorie restriction research done in fruit flies (e.g. [1]). They found that protein was toxic to fruit-flies, and then journalists foolishly extrapolated that to humans. Apparently, feeding fruit-flies yeast extract gives them a short life-span. Who would have thought?!

Now in mice, who primarily eat grains, researchers find that feeding them milk is bad for their brain health. How is this research even funded?! Extrapolating this to humans in any way is entirely foolish.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2017-11-protein-diet-early-life-lifesp...

Interesting... so it looks like RTX can cause cell death. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising. Glad you updated that link.

The TRPV1 receptor is present on sensory nerves, so although it does primarily detect high temperature[1], regulating it can result in pain relief in general, not just a reduction in "burning sensations." Also, the article simplifies the rather complicated molecular biology, much of which is still being worked out. Importantly the article does not discuss killing nerves, just their nerve endings.

[1]TRPV1 also detects high acidity and the endocannabinoid anandamide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRPV1

PS: Your links [1] and [2] are identical... mistake?