Highligts

Recent advances in DNA sequencing technologies have put ubiquitous availability of fully sequenced human genomes within reach. It is no longer hard to imagine the day when everyone will have the means to obtain and store one's own DNA sequence. Widespread and affordable availability of fully sequenced genomes immediately opens up important opportunities in a number of health-related fields. In particular, common genomic applications and tests performed in vitro today will soon be conducted computationally, using digitized genomes. New applications will be developed as genome-enabled medicine becomes increasingly preventive and personalized. However, this progress also prompts significant privacy challenges associated with potential loss, theft, or misuse of genomic data.

We begin to address genomic privacy by focusing on a number of important applications: Paternity Tests, Ancestry Testing, Personalized Medicine, and Genetic Compatibility Tests. We investigate real-world practicality and usability of (as well as interest in) some of proposed privacy-preserving genomic tests.

Motivated by both medical and social applications, we aim to test viability of privacy-agile computational genomic tests in a portable and pervasive setting of modern smartphones. We also design a personal genomic toolkit (called GenoDroid) and implement it on the Android platform.

FatherFinder – an Android app that, on input of two simulated genomes, compute the paternal lineage between the two without revealing any other information about either parties DNA, is available from Google Play.


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