Once again to the question of biohackers
The identity of anonymous DNA donors can be easily found out, scientists say
(However, this is not news for a long time: look at the publication date of an antediluvian article on the same topic – VM :).
Scientists often attract volunteers to participate in genetic research aimed at finding genes associated with the development of congenital diseases or predisposition to certain diseases. Often, participants in such experiments transfer their genetic material to biologists on the condition of complete anonymity, which is guaranteed to them by the organizers of the experiments.
A group of biologists led by Yaniv Erlich from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge (USA) has convincingly demonstrated that the identity of anonymous volunteers can be easily calculated using publicly available data on the Internet.
The authors of the article assessed the safety of the open genome database prepared within the framework of the international HapMap project aimed at compiling a genetic "map" of the world. Several thousand male volunteers from all over the world took part in this project, donating their DNA samples on condition of anonymity.
Ehrlich and his colleagues noticed that the virtual genomes, or rather the accompanying information to them, contained several "punctures". Firstly, it contained the age of the donor, and secondly, the country and region of his residence.
The researchers selected 32 volunteers from the data bank who lived in the North American state of Utah, and found a list of residents of this state on the Internet. This reduced the number of possible "suspects" to an average of 10,000 men in the case of each anonymous volunteer.
Then the scientists visited another site – one of the popular genealogical "social networks", registered in it and extracted fragments of virtual genomes that users published in it to search for distant and near relatives. Biologists were interested in the so–called single-nucleotide polymorphisms – changes in one "letter"- a nucleotide - in the structure of the male Y chromosome.
Scientists immediately managed to find eight users of this "social network" whose Y-chromosome structure coincided with fragments of virtual genomes from anonymous donors of the HapMap project. Ehrlich and his colleagues selected the five most reliable matches and determined the names of the genome owners, focusing on age and other available data in traditional social networks and other open sources of information.
Convinced of the effectiveness of the "spy" technique, the scientists tested it in practice using other genome banks. According to them, they not only managed to confirm the identities of other men from the HapMap project, but also "calculated" the names and other personal information for several women who participated in different genetic studies.
"Our goal is to better understand how easily we can determine whether the genome belongs to a particular person. We hope that our research will help to develop better algorithms for protecting secrets, both during data storage, during their preparation or at the legal level," concludes Ehrlich.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru18.01.2013