NEW CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM and terrorism

[ae at dna.bio.warwick.ac.uk]

In article <4msvcu$28p at oban.cc.ic.ac.uk> Mark Pallen <m.pallen at ic.ac.uk> writes:
>From: Mark Pallen <m.pallen at ic.ac.uk>
>But a thought has been bouncing around my head for some time now...

> If one were to synthesise the Marburg 
>genome as a set of overlapping oligos (say 1000 50-mers), assemble them 
>by PCR and then put a powerful promoter in front that would produce an 
>RNA transcript once inside a mammalian cell, would one be able to create 
>infectious material? I know that the minus strand of filoviruses is not 
>infectious, but what if one instead drove production of the plus strand?

>Is this scenario plausible?

No, not just as RNA.  There has been a lot of work to establish 'infectious' 
cDNA clones of negative sense RNA viruses like influenza and, of more 
relevance here, several paramyxoviruses.  It is absolutely clear that the cDNA 
expressed as RNA alone of either sense is not infectious.  It is necessary to 
coexpress <at least> three virus genes in a very specific ratio to 
get even very poor recovery of virus.  Therefore several other constructs are 
necessary. The cDNA copy of the virus genome could not be used as 
a biological weapon. 
 It is theoretically possible to manufacture the necessary sequences if there 
were no budgetary restraints etc. for use in a laboratory environment but it 
would be easier to get hold of the virus. 

Andrew Easton