Whole Genome Sequencing: Innovation Dream or Privacy Nightmare?

Over the past several years, DNA sequencing has emerged as one of the driving forces in life-sciences, paving the way for affordable and accurate whole ge-nome sequencing. As genomes represent the entirety of an organism’s hereditary information, the availabil-ity of complete human genomes prompts a wide range of revolutionary applications. The hope for improving modern healthcare and better understanding the human genome propels many interesting and challenging re-search frontiers. Unfortunately, however, the prolifer-ation of human genomes amplifies worrisome privacy concerns, since a genome represents a treasure trove of highly personal and sensitive information. In this ar-ticle, we provide an overview of positive results and biomedical advances in the field, and discuss privacy issues associated with human genomic information. Fi-nally, we survey available privacy-enhancing technolo-gies and list a number of open research challenges.