Latest app? Store your DNA on a smartphone

UC Irvine computer science professor Gene Tsudik, who helped create the GenoDroid app. It allows storage of digitized DNA segments on a smartphone. STEVE ZYLIUS, UC IRVINE
















"This is not something I would personally advocate," he said.

The application also could have a broad variety of medical uses.

Segments of DNA could to be scanned for diseases like Huntington's, or certain forms of mental illness.

A patient could bring a smartphone to the doctor's office, or the hospital, to allow physicians to customize treatments for cancer and other maladies based on the patient's DNA.

The encryption technology, meanwhile, would ensure that only a small section of DNA would be revealed at a time, the rest remaining secure.

That could accelerate development of "personalized medicine," in which treatment is tailor-made for individual patients based on their genetic code.

Patients would not have to worry about an insurance company cutting them off after scanning their genomes for health problems.

And drug companies could be free of fears that proprietary treatments would be revealed to competitors – for example, which genetic markers they were using to determine whether the patient's DNA was compatible with a customized treatment.

The encryption would make the exchange between patient and doctor "double blind," with only the test results revealed.

"Our claim to fame is privacy," Tsudik said. "They want to see what part of your genome matches one of your drug markers, but they don't want to reveal it to you. And you don't want to reveal your entire genome to them, either."

Find the "toy" version at

Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or

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