NEW CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM and terrorism

[Sue Jeffrey]

It is indeed possible to create "infectious" strands of nucleic acids
(either RNA or DNA) from known viral sequences. The difficulty in
terming these as "infectious" is that the mode of entry comes into play
- say you do make a promoter-driven infectious DNA of Marburg, how will
you use it to infect people? The DNA has to be either transfected into
cells, or in the least,  properly packaged into a viral envelope or
liposome of some sort that will fuse and allow entry. All these little
details add up to a very complicated process that most netters couldn't
possibly accomplish. Bacterial toxins can be a little more straight
foward, if you have the sequence, you can in vitro transcribe and
translate them and become a little in vitro toxin facility. The cost
and dangers of this would most likely become prohibitive,so it would be
better still to grow up the actual bactteria and purify the toxin. Not
such a big secret to terrorists, I would imagine.
   
  

Sue Jeffrey
sjeffrey at ski.mskcc.org