<\/p>\n
Nature News reports of a growing concern over different standards for DNA screening and biosecurity:<\/p>\n
\u201cA standards war is brewing in the gene-synthesis industry. At stake is the way that the industry screens orders for hazardous toxins and genes, such as pieces of deadly viruses and bacteria. Two competing groups of companies are now proposing different sets of screening standards, and the results could be crucial for global biosecurity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a company that persists with a lower standard, you can drag the industry down to a lower level,\u201d says lawyer Stephen Maurer of the University of California, Berkeley, who is studying how the industry is developing responsible practices. \u201cNow we have a standards war that is a race to the bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more than a year a European consortium of companies called the International Association of Synthetic Biology (IASB)<\/a> based in Heidelberg, Germany, has been drawing up a code of conduct that includes gene-screening standards. Then, at a meeting in San Francisco last month, two of the leading companies \u2014 DNA2.0<\/a> of Menlo Park, California, and Geneart<\/a> of Regensburg, Germany \u2014 announced that they had formulated a code of conduct that differs in one key respect from the IASB recommendations.\u201d<\/p>\n Read the entire article on Nature News<\/a>.<\/p>\n