What a yes vote endorsed
To Amend the Research and Development, Competition, and Innovation Act to Support Nucleic Acid Screening, and for Other Purposes.
What this does
This bill directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology to carry out measurement research supporting best practices and technical standards for biosecurity measures tied to nucleic acid synthesis, including testing to improve the accuracy and reliability of screening and methods for managing sequence-of-concern databases. It requires the Director to convene a consortium of industry, universities, nonprofits, and customers to set consensus priorities and best practices for synthetic nucleic acid procurement screening. The Director must report the consortium's findings to the Senate Commerce and House Science committees within 18 months of the consortium's first meeting. It also authorizes $5,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2027 through 2031 to carry out this work, and adds risk management for engineering biology and biomanufacturing, including artificial intelligence risks, to an existing NIST standards list.
Passed the House by voice vote
How we know · 6 sourced claims
- The bill directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology to carry out measurement research supporting best practices and technical standards for biosecurity measures related to nucleic acid synthesis.Source: Sec. 2, new subsection (b)(1)
- The research includes testing to improve the accuracy and reliability of screening and best practices for managing sequence-of-concern databases.Source: Sec. 2, new subsection (b)(1)(A) and (B)
- It requires the Director to convene a consortium of industry, universities, nonprofits, and customers to set consensus priorities and best practices for synthetic nucleic acid procurement screening.Source: Sec. 2, new subsection (b)(2)
- The Director must report the consortium's findings to the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee within 18 months of the consortium's first meeting.Source: Sec. 2, new subsection (b)(3)
- It authorizes $5,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2027 through 2031 to carry out this work.Source: Sec. 2, new subsection (b)(4)
- It adds risk management for engineering biology and biomanufacturing, including artificial intelligence risks, to an existing NIST standards list.Source: Sec. 2, amendment adding subparagraph (a)(1)(D)
Reported lobbying
At least
6
organizations named this measure in a lobbying filing.
A floor, not a total. Those organizations were counted by the client name on 11 quarterly reports filed by 6 registered lobbying firms in 2025 Q1 and 2025 Q2. The disclosure form takes a free text description of the issue, so an organization that lobbied this measure without naming it is not counted here.
The filings record that lobbying was reported on the measure. They carry no per-bill dollar figure and no position, so nothing here says how much was spent or which side an organization took.
5 of them, in no ranking
- BLUE CROSS AND BLUE SHIELD OF KANSAS INC
- BCBSM INC
- BLUE CROSS AND BLUE SHIELD ASSOCIATION
- BLUE CROSS AND BLUE SHIELD OF FLORIDA INC
- BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD OF MICHIGAN
Listed as filed, in the order the filings were read, and 1 other is not shown. These are not the largest, the earliest or the most active: the extract keeps five names per measure and no ranking is available.
From the LD-2 quarterly lobbying filings published at lda.gov by the Senate Office of Public Records. Read for 2025 Q1, 2025 Q2, 2025 Q3, 2025 Q4, 2026 Q1 and 2026 Q2. The pull came up 2 short in 2025 Q4 and 7 short in 2026 Q2 against the register's own count, so those quarters are the filings posted rather than every one filed. 2026 Q3 is still inside its filing window, so that quarter is only the filings posted so far.