Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2015/133

Private Computation on Encrypted Genomic Data

Kristin Lauter and Adriana Lopez-Alt and Michael Naehrig

Abstract: A number of databases around the world currently host a wealth of genomic data that is invaluable to researchers conducting a variety of genomic studies. However, patients who volunteer their genomic data run the risk of privacy invasion. In this work, we give a cryptographic solution to this problem: to maintain patient privacy, we propose encrypting all genomic data in the database. To allow meaningful computation on the encrypted data, we propose using a homomorphic encryption scheme.

Specifically, we take basic genomic algorithms which are commonly used in genetic association studies and show how they can be made to work on encrypted genotype and phenotype data. In particular, we consider the Pearson Goodness-of-Fit test, the D' and r^2-measures of linkage disequilibrium, the Estimation Maximization (EM) algorithm for haplotyping, and the Cochran-Armitage Test for Trend. We also provide performance numbers for running these algorithms on encrypted data.

Category / Keywords: applications / homomorphic encryption, privacy, genomic computation

Original Publication (with minor differences): to appear in LATINCRYPT 2014

Date: received 18 Feb 2015

Contact author: klauter at microsoft com

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20150226:173147 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2015/133

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