Privacy-preserving storage of sequenced genomic data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The current and future applications of genomic data may raise ethical and privacy concerns. Processing and storing of this data introduce a risk of abuse by potential offenders since the human genome contains sensitive personal information. For this reason, we have developed a privacy-preserving method, named Varlock providing secure storage of sequenced genomic data. We used a public set of population allele frequencies to mask the personal alleles detected in genomic reads. Each personal allele described by the public set is masked by a randomly selected population allele with respect to its frequency. Masked alleles are preserved in an encrypted confidential file that can be shared in whole or in part using public-key cryptography.

Results

Our method masked the

SUBMITTER: Hekel R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8487550 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature