AI-designed proteins test biosecurity safeguards

New patches to biosecurity screening software can make it harder to produce potentially harmful proteins using artificial intelligence.

Around the world, this software monitors processes to artificially make proteins, ensuring that people with bad intentions aren’t producing dangerous proteins, such as toxins. Making slight tweaks with AI to known toxins or viral proteins can bypass the safeguards, researchers report in the Oct. 2 Science. But reinforcing gaps in screening can boost the programs’ ability to flag risky AI-designed proteins.

“AI advances are fueling breakthroughs in biology and medicine,” Eric Horvitz, chief scientific officer at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., said at a Sept. 30 news briefing. “Yet with new power comes responsibility for vigilance and thoughtful risk management.”

Proteins are the workhorses of biology. The molecules perform cellular tasks such as assembling cells and transporting cargo throughout the body. With AI, researchers are unlocking ways to fine-tune existing proteins to carry out specific tasks, to design new proteins or to generate new organisms.

AI can generate digital blueprints for proteins by determining the amino acids needed to make them, but the technology can’t construct physical proteins from thin air. DNA manufacturers string together the appropriate genetic letters and ship the synthetic genes to research labs. Computer programs screen the orders to make sure that the genes don’t make hazardous proteins.

Horvitz and colleagues simulated tests for biosecurity screening models to find weaknesses that could let AI-generated proteins slip by filters. The team generated roughly 76,000 blueprints for 72 harmful proteins, including ricin, botulinum neurotoxin and ones that help viruses infect people.

While the biosecurity screens flagged the DNA for nearly all proteins in their original forms, many AI-adjusted versions snuck through. Software patches helped, even picking up genes after they’d been broken down into fragments. The models failed to flag about 3 percent of variants.

The work was done entirely on computers, meaning that the team did not make physical proteins in the lab, and it’s unclear if the AI-generated variants retained their function.

In reality, biosecurity screens flagging orders for concerning proteins “is an incredibly rare thing,” James Diggans, vice president of policy and biosecurity at Twist Bioscience, a DNA synthesis company based in San Francisco, said at the news briefing.

While cybersecurity threats happen all the time, “close to zero” people have tried to produce malicious proteins, Diggans said. “These systems are an important bulwark against [threats], but we should all find comfort in the fact that this is not a common scenario.”