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Nuclear is not as scary as bioterror. I'm a college senior, and last spring I and two class teammates were able to re-engineer virus Phi X 174 in only 10 weeks
by jonmrodriguez 15y ago
Nuclear is not as scary as bioterror.
I'm a college senior, and last spring I and two class teammates were able to re-engineer virus Phi X 174 in only 10 weeks, starting from zero knowledge of genetic engineering. Then we payed DNA 2.0 (a DNA synthesis contractor) to build us the custom virus for only $2k.
Also: on the third day of class, the prof showed us the complete genome of Ebola, and that based on DNA 2.0's price per length, it would only cost $20k to make.
- saulrh 15y agoI'll paste from my last post on this topic. There was an article that went over exactly this in Discover magazine a month or two ago. Summary is that it's harder than you might think. "You would need more than a garage; you would need a great garage and a lot of money. And it's not trivial. You need the oligonucleotides to stitch genes together, and as far as I know, most companies will check the order if the sequence represents that of a dangerous virus." http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-dawn-of-the-biohackers http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-dawn-of-the-biohacke...
- anateus 15y agoNot a great comfort, but companies like DNA 2.0, Invitrogen, etc. have pretty intensive safety checking of what they're synthesizing. No sending off for smallpox.
- tomjen3 15y agoSo all a terrorist would have to do is get a job there and smuggle an order past the checklist?