14 DAY TRIAL // With funding from federal agencies, scientists at the Rice University have begun a three-year study, which will result in the creation of a new type of genomic test. The test will be able to inform experts whether a disease outbreak is caused by natural causes, or by bioterrorists.
Knowing the difference between the two is essential towards developing accurate and relevant emergency responses, authorities say.
Over the past few years, conflicts that the United States had with its enemies no longer took place on the battlefield, face-to-face, but rather under the shadow of anonymity.
Terrorism, bioterrorism, and chemical warfare – all forms of asymmetric conflicts – are now the norm, and the US is seeking to defend itself against threats both foreign and domestic.
As part of this effort, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) decided to fund the Rice team, in producing this early detection test for biological warfare.
“In a natural outbreak, there are classic rules of epidemiology that describe how particular types of diseases will spread,” says the director of the Rice Institute for Biosciences and Bioengineering, Yousif Shamoo.
He is also the principal investigator of the new research, and an associate professor of biochemistry and cell biology at the university.
“In a man-made outbreak, you may be faced with an actor who is continuously spreading the disease, or you might have a person who's engineered strains knowing public health strategy,” he adds
The area on which the researchers will focus will be identifying signs that indicate at the fact that a particular viral strain, for example, was grown in the lab.
The experts say that there are large differences between microorganisms grown artificially, and those that endure “in the wild.”
“Living out in the wild is a pretty rough existence. By comparison, life in the laboratory is very posh. You live in very nice conditions on agar plates eating this very rich media,” Shamoo explains.
“And it's the same diet every day. Our expectation is that organisms will lose certain genes that allow them to get nutrition from the soil or the gut or wherever they came from, simply because they won't need them anymore,” the expert concludes.