Researchers Brought Back a Pox Virus Using Mail-Order DNA and it Only Cost $100000 – Futurism

In Brief Researchers have revived an extinct horsepox virus using synthetic DNA strands ordered for about $100,000. This opens up new possibilities for researchers looking to make better vaccines, but also the potential for these viruses to become bioweapons. Reviving Extinct Viruses

Canadian researchers revived an extinct horsepox virus last year on a shoestring budget, by usingmail-order DNA. That may not seem like a big deal, until you consider that this relatively inexpensivetechnique could be used by anyone perhaps even to bring back something like smallpox, one of the most feared diseases in humanitys history. The teams research which remains unpublished was intended to create better vaccines and even cancer treatments. ThoughDavid Evans of the University of Alberta, the research lead, admitted that he also undertook the project to prove that it could be done. And, that itwouldnt necessarily require a lot of time, money, and even biomedical skill or knowledge. As he toldScience,The world just needs to accept the fact that you can do this and now we have to figure out what is the best strategy for dealing with that. Thus reigniting a powerful debate in the biomedical science community.Click to View Full Infographic

The researchers bought overlapping DNA fragments from a commercial synthetic DNA company. Each fragment was about 30,000 base pairs long, and because they overlapped, the team was able to stitch them together to complete the genome of the 212,000-base-pair horsepox virus. When they introduced the genome into cells that were already infected with a different kind of poxvirus, the cells began to produce virus particles of the infectious horsepox variety. While horsepox doesnt infect humans, other pox viruses do: and if the technique works to recreate one kind of pox virus, it could likely work for others as well. This technique was first demonstrated by another group of researchers in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper in 2002.

The idea that it would someday be possible to synthesize poxviruses is nothing new. In 2002, virologists assembled the poliovirus from scratch. However, this new work certainly does raise disturbing questions about how modern biotechnology could help terroristsweaponize viruses, which has in turnprompted a discussion about the regulation of science: There is always an experiment or event that triggers closer scrutiny, and this sounds like it should be one of those events where the authorities start thinking about what should be regulated, Northern Arizona University anthrax expert Paul Keim told Science.

This work also changes the longstanding debate about what to do with the worlds few remaining smallpox samples. While scientists have argued about whether to destroy them or study them, if the viruses or viruses very much like them could be manufactured, it wouldnt matter what happened to those samples.You think its all tucked away nicely in freezers, but its not, National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases virologist Peter Jahrling told Science. The genie is out of the lamp.

This brings us back to David Evans of the University of Alberta, who led the horsepox research. Pox viruses are common and infect many animals (including humans), but after it was eradicated, whats left of the dreaded smallpox virus isheld at CDC and cannot be studied. Evans had initially requested the use of existing horsepox samples from the CDC, but his request was declined because his purposes were commercial. So, instead, he synthesized a new virus instead, hoping to gain some insight into creating better vaccines. This is the most successful vaccine in human history, Evans said of the smallpox vaccine in Science,the foundation of modern immunology and microbiology, and yet we dont know where it came from.There is a huge, interesting academic question here.

Read the original here:
Researchers Brought Back a Pox Virus Using Mail-Order DNA and it Only Cost $100000 - Futurism