Cyberbiosecurity: A Call for Cooperation in a New Threat Landscape.

The life sciences now interface broadly with information technology (IT) and cybersecurity. This convergence is a key driver in the explosion of biotechnology research and its industrial applications in health care, agriculture, manufacturing, automation, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology. As the information and handling mechanisms for biological materials have become increasingly digitized, many market sectors are now vulnerable to threats at the digital interface. This growing landscape will be addressed by cyberbiosecurity, the emerging field at the convergence of both the life sciences and IT disciplines. This manuscript summarizes the current cyberbiosecurity landscape, identifies existing vulnerabilities, and calls for formalized collaboration across a swath of disciplines to develop frameworks for early response systems to anticipate, identify, and mitigate threats in this emerging domain.

Review of quantitative and qualitative studies on U.S. public perceptions of synthetic biology.

How are public perceptions towards synthetic biology likely to evolve? Which factors will impact the framing of this emerging technology, its benefits and risks? The objective of this article is not to draw exhaustive conclusions about public perceptions of synthetic biology, but rather to provide readers with a review of integrated findings from the first quantitative and qualitative research ever conducted on this subject in the United States. Synthetic biology survey research shows two clear findings. The first is that most people know little or nothing about synthetic biology. Second, notwithstanding this lack of knowledge, respondents are likely to venture some remark about what they think synthetic biology is and the tradeoff between potential benefits and potential risks. Finding only some support for the "familiarity argument"-according to which support for emerging technologies will likely increase as awareness of them develops-this article suggests that analogs to cloning, genetic engineering and stem cell research appear to be recurrent in the framing process of synthetic biology. The domain of application seems to be another decisive factor in the framing of synthetic biology. Finally, acceptance of the risk-benefit tradeoff of synthetic biology seems to depend on having an oversight structure that would prove able to manage unknowns, human and environmental concerns, and long-term effects. The most important conclusion of this study is the need for additional investigation of factors that will shape public perceptions about synthetic biology, its potential benefits, and its potential risks.