Ashwin J. Ram Authored “New DNA Screening Standard Has No Clear Playbook,” Published in Law360

“On Oct. 13, the National Science and Technology Council’s standard for screening mail-order DNA shifts from resemblance to function. The companies that turn a customer’s text file into a physical vial are the last checkpoint before a dangerous molecule exists, and they must begin catching sequences that are dangerous because of what they do, not because they resemble something on a government list. The guidance meant to make that standard administrable was promised before the deadline. It has not issued.

Almost nobody outside the life sciences knows this business exists. A researcher who needs genetic material no longer extracts it from a living thing; she types it out. DNA is an instruction set in a four-letter alphabet, and a vial arrives from a commercial provider about a week later. Nearly all of it is ordinary commerce, underpinning vaccine development, cancer research and industrial enzymes. It also explains the narrow foundation: Sequences for many agents of concern are published, so what an actor needs is the physical molecule.”

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