Biological threat agents

Examples of Chemical and Biological Threat Agents of Concern, 9 2-2 Toxicities of Lethal Gases, 9... 

As suggested by the wording of the topic of this report in the list above, this study is concerned not only with technologies for detecting the presence of chemical or biological threat agents in the air transportation context, but also with... 

VerBerkmoes, N. C. Hervey, W. J. Shah, M. Land, M. Hauser, L. Larimer, F. W. Van Berkel, G. J. Goeringer, D. E. Evaluation of shotgun proteomics for identification of biological threat agents in complex enviromental matrices Experimental simulations. Anal. Chem. 2005,27, 923-932. 

S.S. Iqbal, M.W. Mayo, J.G. Bruno, B.V. Bronk, C.A. Batt and J.P. Chambers, A review of molecular recognition technologies for detection of biological threat agents, Biosens. Bioelectron., 15 (2000) 549-578. 

V.A. Petrenko and V.J. Vodyanoy, Phage display for detection of biological threat agents, J. Microbiol. Meth., 53 (2003) 253-262. 

Henchal, E. A., Teska, J. D., Ludwig, G. V., Shoemaker, D. R., Ezzell, J. W. (2001). Current laboratory methods for biological threat agent identification. Clinics in Laboratory Medicine, 21(3), 661-678. 

The development of advanced techniques is important for the sensitive and effective detection of biological threat agents, particularly in cases where the analysis includes complex samples containing multiple contaminating factors. 

Ricin as a potential biological threat agent has received much popular press. In 2003, suspects were arrested in London for making ricin from castor seed in their apartment (Risen and van Natta 2003). The popular press has speculated that if ricin were made, it could be used to contaminate food in military mess halls. All of these instances indicate that biological and chemical materials may be a potential terrorist weapon to compromise the safety of the military and civilian food supply or other vulnerable areas. Given the extreme toxicity of ricin, the relative ease with which it can be obtained, and the fact that references to its use have been discovered in terrorist haunts, the ability to accurately and precisely detect ricin is a critical need. 

Another biological threat agent that could potentially be used in a terrorist attack is bacterial spores. This is similar to the anthrax incidents of 2001. In our studies. Bacillus cereus was used as a surrogate for B. anlhracis to evaluate the sorption of... 

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