Anthrax attack bug "identical" to army strain

NewScientist.com news service

19:00 09 May 02

The DNA sequence of the anthrax sent through the US mail in 2001 has been revealed and confirms suspicions that the bacteria originally came from a US military laboratory.

The data released uses codenames for the reference strains against which the attack strain was compared. But New Scientist can reveal that the two reference strains that appear identical to the attack strain most likely originated at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick (USAMRIID), Maryland.

The new work also shows that substantial genetic differences can emerge in two samples of an anthrax culture separated for only three years. This means the attacker's anthrax was not separated from its ancestors at USAMRIID for many generations.

The new genetic sequencing work was done by the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland (TIGR), and Paul Keim's team at the University of Northern Arizona at Flagstaff. Before the attacks, TIGR had started sequencing a non-pathogenic derivative of the "Ames" strain of anthrax from the UK biodefence establishment at Porton Down.

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