Genetically engineered cell lines used in biomedical research have long been prone to misidentification and unauthorized use, wasting billions of dollars each year and jeopardizing critical scientific discoveries. These problems not only undermine reproducibility of research results, but also put valuable intellectual property at risk.

Now, researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas have developed a novel method to embed unique genetic identifiers in engineered cell lines, eliminating identification errors and safeguarding innovations with tamper-proof genomic tags.