In September, the UC Office of the President added a policy regarding campus life-sciences research to its database.

The policy establishes a list of instructions for campus committees responsible for the supervision of Dual Use Research of Concern, or DURC, which is defined by the policy as research that provides information that could be directly misapplied and significantly threaten public health.

According to UCOP spokesperson Kate Moser, the policy was created in response to a recent update of federal requirements. As of Sept. 24, federal policy requires that all institutional recipients of federal funds, such as the University of California, implement a procedure to evaluate any campus life-sciences DURC research that uses the 15 agents and toxins described in the policy and that involves the seven specific immunity-decreasing experimental effects specified in the policy.

The intention of the policy is to strengthen the review process by campus life-sciences researchers in order to preserve the benefits of life sciences while decreasing potential harmful side effects of research.

According to Vice Chancellor of Research Administration and Compliance Patrick Schlesinger, UC Berkeley laboratories currently do not practice DURC. None of the campus laboratories use the 15 toxins described in the policy, and none of the seven specified experimental effects have been observed.

“We don’t have any present plans to incorporate Dual Use Research of Concern into our laboratories,” Schlesinger said. “It’s hard to know what the future holds. If we did, then we would, of course, immediately comply with the federal requirements described in the UCOP policy.”

Recently, campus assistant professor of bioengineering John Dueber and his lab published a paper about an investigation of a diverse family of plant-specialized metabolites called benzylisoquinoline alkaloids. According to Dueber, the same technology that allows bioengineers to create these products could be used to create products such as morphine and codeine, which, in a high enough concentration, could be physiologically dangerous.

“Our work is a very far cry from anything remotely illicit, but we did see it as a potential step along the way of producing high enough concentrations of morphine or codeine,” Dueber said. “We thought it was very important to publish our work so that we could start talking to policy experts right away about the eventual reality of illicit research.”

Dueber believes that collaboration between scientists and policymakers is necessary in order to maintain safety in research.

“When I go to any synthetic biology conference, there is always a part of the conference that involves people from other fields, such as sociologists and psychologists, and that discusses the ramifications of the cutting-edge work that we are doing,” Dueber said. “There are always going to be potential dangers as science expands at such a fast rate, but scientists are taking measures to make sure that safety is preserved.”