Data Sheet 1: Developing a Standard Definition for Sequences of Concern

1.1 million sequences from pathogens, toxins, and their relatives were used to develop a biosecurity screening rubric. The rubric, refined through a stakeholder review process, categorizes sequences of concern for human pandemic-potential viruses, low-risk genes, and controlled toxins. Applying the rubric reduced disputed categorizations by 44.3% for controlled viruses in the test set.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking biosecurity screening systems based on the provided test set of 1.1 million sequences.
• Training machine learning models for sequence classification based on the defined 'sequence of concern' rubric.
• Informing policy and standards development for synthetic biology based on the concrete definition and test sets.

Strengths

• Test set contains 1.1 million sequences from pathogens, toxins, and related organisms.
• The developed rubric reduced disputed sequence categorizations by 44.3% for controlled viruses.
• Initial analysis found over 80% agreement among four existing biosecurity screening systems on categorizations.

Limitations

• Dataset size is 89.5 KB, indicating a limited scope likely focused on methodology and definitions rather than raw sequence data.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale analysis.

Provenance

Source

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Collection Method

Sequences were organized from the Australia Group Common Control Lists and their non-controlled relatives, along with model organisms and synthetic constructs.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-04 05:33:02; freshness should be verified.