The rising spectre of bio-crimes

Subject : Science and Technology

Section: Biotechnology

Easy availability of genome editing and sequencing tools has democratized genetic engineering
Newly emerging ‘synthetic biology’ enables wrongdoings — from illegal gene editing to home-cooked drugs and neuro-hacking
Some might remember the 2001‘anthrax attacks’ — people received letters laced with anthrax, a killer bacterium; five died and several fell sick, and it was not until years later that the letters were traced to Dr Bruce Ivins, an American microbiologist, who took his life just before he was about to be arrested.

Synthetic biology

There is no standard definition of synthetic biology, but it essentially refers to creating organisms that are not found in nature and designed to do a task that we desire.
However, synthetic biology could also mean “re-programming” natural organisms to perform a task or modifying them to have new abilities, in the same way that computers can be re-programmed for specific functions. For example, the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technology, where immune cells can be engineered to recognise and attack cancer cells.
Synthetic biology, often described as the biology equivalent of the internet, has many promising and useful applications. Every country is looking at it seriously. In February, the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, brought out an insightful ‘Foresight Paper’ calling for a policy on synthetic biology. But much like how the internet has engendered cybercrimes, synthetic biology, too, could be misused.

Easy access

One is ‘next-generation sequencing’ (NGS), which refers to ultra-quick genome sequencing. According to Illumina, a company that offers NGS services, the technology “is used to determine the orderof nucleotides in entire genomes or targeted regions of DNA or RNA”. With NGS, the cost of genome sequencing has come down to a few hundred dollars from thousands earlier — the ‘sub-$100’ milestone is tantalisingly within reach.
The second is the gene editing tool CRISPR, a Nobel Prize winning technology that helps alter a DNA and modify gene functions. This technology has rather democratised genetic engineering.
TALEN is another gene editing tool. These genome editing kits “are being made openly available for purchase over the internet”, says a publication of the UK Home Office on ‘Future trends in security’.

Vulnerabilities

Synthetic biology involves large-scale synthesis of DNA which can create new pathogens from scratch, recreate old pathogens, or engineer naturally occurring organisms to become a threat to biosafety. If a sequence coding for a toxin is made available on the Internet and anyone can print the gene or pathogen.
Add to this deadly concoction yet another poison — cybercrime — and the potential for crime increases by orders of magnitude. Synthetic biology integrates a diverse set of technologies to enable various applications that have enormous potential and they are now freely available online through kits, bioinformatics tools and data.

Evil experiments

A criminal possibly can do— illegal gene editing, home-made bad drugs, genetic blackmail, neuro-hacking, bio-hacking, bio-discrimination, cyber bio-crime and bio-malware.
A blackmailer, for instance, could easily obtain saliva samples of a father and son and do a paternity test; if negative, he could resort to blackmail. A neuro-hacker can manipulate the gut biome of a person and control the person’s brain, because there is a connection between the activities of the bacteria in the gut and the brain.