DNA synthesis companies currently face a cumbersome and error-prone process when screening orders for sequences of concern, such as pathogens. Manual verification of researchers' credentials and their history of working with specific organisms slows down legitimate research while creating biosecurity gaps. One way to address this could be by automating the link between researchers' publication histories and the organisms they've studied.

How the Tool Would Work

The core idea involves mapping researchers' ORCID identifiers to taxonomic IDs (TAXIDs) of organisms mentioned in their publications. Here's how it could function:

• Input a researcher's ORCID ID to retrieve their publication history via ORCID's API
• Parse publications for organism mentions and map these to standardized TAXIDs using databases like NCBI Taxonomy
• Output a list of organisms the researcher has worked with, potentially with confidence scores based on publication frequency

More advanced versions might analyze co-author networks or calculate risk scores based on the researcher's history with high-risk pathogens.

Potential Benefits and Implementation

This approach could benefit multiple stakeholders:

• DNA synthesis companies would reduce manual screening work while improving compliance
• Legitimate researchers would experience fewer order processing delays
• Biosecurity organizations would gain a standardized screening tool

For implementation, one could start with a basic web tool or API that performs the core ORCID-to-TAXID mapping, then gradually add features like collaborator network analysis. Initial testing could verify whether publication metadata contains sufficient organism information and whether researchers consistently use standard organism names.

Addressing Potential Challenges

Some challenges might include ambiguous organism names in publications, which could potentially be resolved using natural language processing techniques. Privacy concerns could be addressed through transparent data usage policies and opt-out options. The system would need regular updates to maintain accurate TAXID mappings from reference databases.

This approach differs from existing solutions like ORCID profiles or NCBI Taxonomy by specifically bridging the gap between researcher identities and their organism-specific research history, creating a novel tool for biosecurity screening.