Strengthening biosecurity in the era of AI blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-i… @MSFTIssues

No one should be able to order a bioweapon through the mail. @IFP & @JoinFAI are proud to co-lead an open letter calling for mandatory DNA synthesis screening & recordkeeping. Signatories include: - Sam Altman, CEO & Co-Founder, OpenAI - Dario Amodei, CEO & Co-Founder, Anthropic - David Baker, Director, Institute for Protein Design; 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient - Patrick Collison, CEO & Co-Founder, Stripe - Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator - Demis Hassabis, CEO, Google DeepMind; 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient - Emily Leproust, CEO & Co-Founder, Twist Bioscience - Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard Law School - Gerald W. Parker, former Special Assistant to the President for Biosecurity and Pandemic Response - Mustafa Suleyman, CEO, Microsoft AI - Alex Tabarrok, Professor of Economics, George Mason University - Alexandr Wang, Chief AI Officer, Meta; Founder, Scale AI - Christine E. Wormuth, President & CEO, Nuclear Threat Initiative; 25th Secretary of the Army Read the letter and see the full list of signatories: screendna.org Many DNA synthesis companies voluntarily screen orders to mitigate biosecurity risks, but no law requires them to do so. Leaders in AI, biotech, life sciences, national security, and the nucleic acid synthesis industry agree that Congress should act to strengthen safeguards against biological threats. @deanwball put it well in the WSJ: “If you’re synthesizing the stuff that yields biological life and viruses, we’re asking you to screen to see whether it is dangerous in some way. That seems like a reasonable thing for society to insist upon.”

"What keeps me up at night is the fast pace of acceleration of open weight models in the ecosystem. They do not prioritize the same type of safety refusals." - Yunyun Wang, @OpenAI We just ran a biosecurity panel at @SynBioBeta today. Here's what you missed: AI is making it easier to design dangerous biology. The design-build-test cycle is compressing so fast the panel debated whether it's still a cycle at all. The screening tools mostly work. Kevin Flyangolts from @aclid said even heavily AI-redesigned sequences still conserve key functional residues, so current systems catch most of them... for now. But nobody wants to pay for screening. Jake Beal from @Raytheon said plainly that biosecurity is a pure cost center for every DNA provider. If you refuse to synthesize a flagged sequence, the customer goes to your competitor. Now, it's a race to the bottom. OpenAI deliberately downweighted biology training in their open weight models to reduce misuse risk. The problem is that the people building drug therapies and medical countermeasures need those same capabilities. The defenders lose too. Know-your-customer matters as much as computational screening. Scott Fay from @AnsaBio made this case. We've been talking about a passport system for legitimate users of risky sequences for years. Still doesn't exist. The Sequence Biosecurity Risk Consortium is trying to shift screening from "does this match a known pathogen" to "does this do something harmful to human cells." It's the right direction, but the speed needs to pick up. We love talking about what synthetic biology can build. We're less excited about what it takes to keep it safe. So who exactly is going to fund the defense side of this equation before something goes wrong? Something to think about. @DARPA @mkoeris #SynBioBeta2026 #SyntheticBiology #Biosecurity #Biotech

Ongoing advances in AI for protein design mean sequence-similarity screening may one day no longer be enough to flag biosecurity risks. With an eye on trends and futures, we explore possibilities and pathways toward function-based screening in our new perspective: “Beyond Sequence Similarity: Toward Function-Based Screening of Nucleic Acid Synthesis.” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.… @TwistBioscience @aclid @Microsoft @DHSgov @IBBIS_bio @RANDCorporation @BulletinAtomic @RadicalNumerics

Join us for a night of apps and drinks to kick off SynBioBeta on May 5th from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. We're excited to host you all with our friends at @IBBIS_bio Register today! lu.ma/6fhjkqin

Identifying & mitigating an AI-enabled biosecurity vulnerability. Confidential effort on biosecurity red-teaming leads to distrib. of "patches" that bolster DNA synthesis screening. Article: aka.ms/AAtoa8e Work continues. @MSFTResearch @TwistBioscience @aclid @EngBioRC

🗞️ 2048 Ventures Portfolio Company News: The US Is Cracking Down on Synthetic DNA wired.com/story/synthetic-dn… @aclid // @2048vc // #startups // #VC

Check out this new paper by on testing the performance of various DNA synthesis screening tools--including @IBBIS_bio's Common Mechanism and tools from @aclid , @Battelle and Raytheon @nwheeler443 @jdiggans @sarahcarter1 liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/a…

On the RISKGAMING PODCAST: 🦠The impending risk of designer bioweapons 🔬The tails side of the long-awaited Centry of Bio The NEED for new approaches to BIOSECURITY Hosted by @DannyCrichton and our guest @kevfly16

#23 Kevin Flyangolts: Aclid: This week we speak with Kevin, the founder of @aclidbio: a security and compliance automation platform for biotechnology. Aclid is growing the bioeconomy by making genetic engineering more accessible and safer. #MedTwitter podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…

Grateful for the opportunity to share our story and work with the @bitsinbio community!

🧬 We're pleased to announced @aclidbio closed an over-subscribed $3.3M seed funding round to advance our biosecurity and compliance platform for gene and oligo synthesis! Thanks @2048vc and @iaventures for your support. aclid.bio/press-release

Our team is hiring! We're looking for a founding engineer to help build one of the first security and safety platforms for synthetic biology. linkedin.com/jobs/view/34274…

We're working with @sigsci, @RiceUniversity, and @aclidbio to create a Biosecurity Sequence Screening Training Course for Bioengineers that will increase awareness of the proactive safety measures needed to grow the bioindustrial manufacturing sector: buff.ly/3DDa4cW

Thank you to @TheBioMADE @WhiteHouse for the opportunity to develop a Biosecurity Sequence Screening Training Course with @SigSci @traingene @RiceUniversity @kevfly16 @aclidbio!