What we publish.
What we hold back.
Bactaegion publishes scientific knowledge as a public good (AGPL-3.0 + CC0). But some findings carry dual-use risk — usable to engineer enhanced phage resistance, or anti-defense countermeasures. We have explicit doctrine, an active Biosafety circle, and embargo procedures inherited from Asilomar (1975) and the Nagoya Protocol.
1. Asilomar (1975) — the community can self-regulate
The 1975 Asilomar Conference showed that biomedical researchers can pause and self-regulate before regulators intervene. Bactaegion inherits that posture: the community holds the embargo button.
2. iGEM screening — systematic, not occasional
The iGEM model imposes systematic sequence-order screening. Bactaegion's commit hooks block any sequence matching restricted lists before it lands on the public branch.
3. Nagoya Protocol — respect for source countries
The genetic information of bacteria originating from a sovereign country's biodiversity remains subject to that country's rules on benefit-sharing. Bactaegion's metadata always carries the source country and the relevant access rules.
- Bacterial defense protein families documented in published literature ≥1 secondary source
- Therapeutic leads with explicit falsifiability criteria, signed by DID
- Curated boosters, taxonomy, narrative chapters
- Tools, code, scripts, infrastructure (AGPL-3.0)
- Aggregated peer-review verdicts (median, anti-leaderboard)
- Dual-use protocols (BACT-050): detailed cloning/engineering steps for newly characterized anti-defenses or phage-resistant modifications, until Biosafety circle review
- Patient-derived sequence contributions: never published; can only be used via federated learning (J6, out of B0 scope — no data leaves the host institution)
- Embargoed pre-publications: when an Advisor or partner lab has a paper under review, the related Bactaegion content stays in a private branch until publication
The detail of the embargo procedure lives in GOVERNANCE.md (Biosafety circle section).