How to Detect a Man-Made Biothreat

A new, highly transmissible strain of influenza emerges. A pesticide-resistant insect decimates huge swaths of crops. A patient winds up in the emergency room with a bacterial strain that doesn’t respond to any available antibiotics. Any of these scenarios could happen due to natural evolutionary changes among pathogens or pests. But as genetic engineering gets cheaper and easier, it’s becoming increasingly plausible that they might one day be the product of deliberate manipulation.

To guard against these potential threats, the US government is funding the development of tests to detect dangerous bioengineered organisms before they have a chance to cause significant harm. The effort was announced in 2017 by the

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