Bioterrorism and Biodefense

The use of viral and microbial pathogens as weapons is prohibited by international treaties. However its feasibility cannot be ignored after the acts of terrorism on and after 9/11, as well as the anthrax attack through the mail system in the aftermath of 9/11, which led to the death of five persons in the United States. To protect against acts by terrorists, a proteomic approach has been initiated to understand the proteomics of such pathogens as well 

Synthetic biology uses the DNA sequence information of a virus to resynthesize the viral molecule via throughput technology of nucleotide synthesis and robotics. Using these technologies, it is possible, for example, to spread the small pox virus, and cause mass chaos which has been already eliminated from the earth. Thus, the power of synthetic biology has to be protected from terrorists just like the nuclear bombs falling in their hands. 

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Bence-Jones, H. 1847. Papers on chemical pathology. Lecture III. Lancet ii, 269-272. 

Kusick, D. Valle, B Childs, M. Vidal and A-L Barabasi. 2007. The human disease network. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104, 8685-90. 

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De Clerq, Erik, and Earl R. Kem, eds. Handbook of Viral Bioterrorism and Biodefense. Amsterdeim Elsevier Science, 2003. 

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