Nucleic Acid Standards for Biosecurity Act

This bill amends the Research and Development, Competition, and Innovation Act to support nucleic acid screening for biosecurity. It adds best practices, guidelines, and technical standards for risk management in engineering biology and biomanufacturing, including risks from artificial intelligence, to the existing law. It also creates a new subsection on nucleic acid synthesis screening tools and standards.

Sec. 2, Supporting nucleic acid screening: The bill updates the existing law by adding a new subsection (b) on nucleic acid synthesis screening tools and standards. The Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, consulting with other federal agencies, must conduct measurement research to develop best practices and technical standards for biosecurity measures related to nucleic acid synthesis. This includes testing to improve screening accuracy, best practices for security and database management, technical implementation guidance, conformity-assessment standards, and methods to evaluate effectiveness.

The Director must convene a consortium of stakeholders, including industry, universities, nonprofits, and customers, to develop consensus priorities and best practices for synthetic nucleic acid procurement screening and create roadmaps for the research. Within 18 months of the consortium's first meeting, the Director must report findings to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The bill authorizes $5,000,000 for each fiscal year from 2025 through 2029 for these activities, from funds already authorized for NIST laboratory activities.