title: Secure distributed genome analysis for GWAS and sequence comparison computation.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The rapid increase in the availability and volume of genomic data makes significant advances in biomedical research possible, but sharing of genomic data poses challenges due to the highly sensitive nature of such data. To address the challenges, a competition for secure distributed processing of genomic data was organized by the iDASH research center.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this work we propose techniques for securing computation with real-life genomic data for minor allele frequency and chi-squared statistics computation, as well as distance computation between two genomic sequences, as specified by the iDASH competition tasks. We put forward novel optimizations, including a generalization of a version of mergesort, which might be of independent interest.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We provide implementation results of our techniques based on secret sharing that demonstrate practicality of the suggested protocols and also report on performance improvements due to our optimization techniques.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This work describes our techniques, findings, and experimental results developed and obtained as part of iDASH 2015 research competition to secure real-life genomic computations and shows feasibility of securely computing with genomic data in practice.
authors.forename: Yihua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Blanton
authors.forename: Ghada
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Almashaqbeh
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016494:Computer Security / Q000592:standards*; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards