Nov 24, 2025
BioSecure: know-your-customer system for DNA synthesis companies
Phil Palmer, Ryan Teo, Michal Karlubík, Jamie Harris
Artificial intelligence accelerates biological design capabilities whilst lowering barriers to hazardous information, creating biosecurity challenges at the critical interface between digital and physical biology: DNA synthesis. We present BioSecure, a modular customer screening framework built during a 48-hour hackathon to address emerging threats from AI-designed biological sequences. The system integrates government-backed identity verification with liveness detection through Veriff, sanctions and watchlist screening, institutional legitimacy checks against the Research Organization Registry (ROR) and biosafety level databases, publication history verification via ORCID, and sequence screening using the ESM-C 300M protein language model. BioSecure synthesises these signals into cumulative risk assessment rather than binary accept/reject logic, functioning as a decision-support tool that preserves human authority over order fulfilment. The framework addresses a critical gap: whilst sequence screening adoption has improved, customer screening remains patchy and manual. We demonstrate that AI-enabled threats require AI-enabled defences, and that automated customer verification can complement sequence screening to create defence-in-depth against misuse of synthetic biology.
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Cite this work
@misc {
title={
(HckPrj) BioSecure: know-your-customer system for DNA synthesis companies
},
author={
Phil Palmer, Ryan Teo, Michal Karlubík, Jamie Harris
},
date={
11/24/25
},
organization={Apart Research},
note={Research submission to the research sprint hosted by Apart.},
howpublished={https://apartresearch.com}
}


