As it turns out, you really CAN slap a barcode on just about anything.
In this particular case, colleagues at my former stomping grounds at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center have recently published two papers describing the construction of a genetically barcoded Bacillus anthracis spore simulant and its detection in the environment.
This is a huge advance for biodefense community concerned with environmental detection, persistence, and decontamination. By multiplexing the primer and probe detection sequences, literally thousands of uniquely identifiable simulants can be constructed. This approach effectively side steps many problems of using some of the traditional, unlabeled simulants that are present from previous tests, naturally occurring populations, and use of biological insecticides.
Cudos to Drs. Peter Emanuel and Sandy Gibbons for their work advancing our biodefense capabilities, and capturing the cover of the ASM Applied and Environmental Microbiology Journal!
Figure used with permission of the American Society of Microbiology, Applied and Environmental Microbiology Journal.
Their work opens a unique possibilities, because an encryption scheme for watermarks can be used to track pathogens. This is a follow up on
DNA Barcodes and Watermarks
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/barcodes.pdf
Willy,
Thanks for the note. Indeed, there are some really interesting possibilities for detection, decontamination, re-aerosolization, and other studies that are of immediate interest to the CBRNE community. The technology REALLY opens up the aperture of what can be done with unequivocal results in field testing.
This report was written in the early days of the big boom of available genomic sequence of major pathogens. It will be interesting to see if this does make an impact on the ability to track pathogens and/or other organisms of interest.