Securebio

As part of its SecureDNA project, the organization made significant progress in 2023 on its gene synthesis screening software. The team released an alpha version and prepared for a public beta launch. This free software offers best-in-class performance in screening criteria and runs against a continuously updated hazard database. SecureDNA uniquely integrates with both vendor order flows and benchtop synthesizers. The organization successfully tested with major manufacturers and collaborated with leading gene synthesis companies in the US and China. Two papers were prepared for submission to Nature, one on the screening system and another on its cryptographic architecture. These advancements further the organization's goal of securely monitoring synthetic DNA orders against various public health hazards.

As part of its work on the FAR-UVC project, the organization conducted an in-depth examination of the safety of far-UVC germicidal light throughout 2023. This comprehensive study involved convening a group of experts for both in-person and remote workshops over a 12-month period. The culmination of this extensive research was the release of a major paper on far-UVC safety, effectively concluding the organization's work on this project. While the organization designed a clinical study to further investigate the application of far-UVC technology, it determined that executing such a trial was not feasible given the available resources. This decision marked the completion of the organization's active involvement in the FAR-UVC research initiative.

As part of its work on the Nucleic Acid Observatory (NAO) project, the organization runs experiments to detect metagenomic sequences in wasterwater, with the ultimate aim of detecting new diseases before they grow exponentially in the community. In 2023, The NAO team conducted a major experiment, collecting wastewater samples from a prominent US airport and one of the nation's largest wastewater treatment plants. This rich dataset is slated for analysis in the coming year. The team expanded its research output, publishing a paper on pathogen abundance as a function of disease prevalence, building upon their previous report on the topic. Additionally, they released a paper on virus-like phagemids, which were designed and built in-house to experimentally characterize wastewater-based pathogen monitoring systems. To accelerate disease detection capabilities in wastewater, the organization initiated work on a more immediate NAO pilot project, focusing on specific pathogens rather than the full-scale, pathogen-agnostic approach of the primary NAO initiative.