War on terror meets war on cancer
...ad by spores that are almost dormant. But for live bioweapons spread through the air in an aerosol mist ?bacteria that cause plague, tularemia or Q fever, for example ?the difference in isotope concentrations inside and outside the bacterial cells must be taken into account in trying to identify where the bacte......, so screening gene-synthesis orders for potential bioweapons shouldn't pose a huge challenge. Indeed, a company called Craic Computing,based in Seattle, has written opensource software called Blackwatch that does just that. It is used by one of the leading gene-synthesis companies, Blue HeronBiotechnology of B......weaponization of plague in the former Soviet Union bioweapons program also made the pathogen a primary biodefense concern. Additional medical concerns have arisen from the evolution of multidrug-resistant strains of the plague bacterium found in patients from several locations. The plague bacterium Yersinia pe...