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Ebola: Scientists Could Manufacture Disease Viral biological weapons agents such as Ebola and the deadly 1918 influenza strain would be fairly easy to make from scratch with the technique that scientists recently used to make polio virus, New Scientist reported last week (see GSN, July 12). Polio virus is relatively easy to make because it has a small genome — 7,500 base pairs, or “letters” in its genetic sequence — and it generally requires only that small amount of genetic material to reproduce, according to New Scientist. Most other viruses would be difficult to make because they have larger genomes and require that genetic material plus additional material such as proteins to replicate, the magazine reported. For example, the smallpox virus would be very difficult to manufacture because it has a genetic sequence of 185,000 base pairs, according to the magazine. The Ebola genome, on the other hand, is only slightly larger than the polio genome, making it relatively easy to manufacture Ebola virus, New Scientist reported. Ebola uses proteins to help it replicate, but scientists reported in January that they had used a process called “reverse genetics” to make the virus from its genome plus pieces of DNA that coded for the necessary proteins. Scientists might also be able to use reverse genetics to manufacture the 1918 influenza virus, which killed as many as 40 million people, according to New Scientist. Medical investigators have recovered fragments of the strain from tissue samples and researchers have published three out of eight of the virus’s gene sequences with another two expected to be published this year, according to Jeffery Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. It will probably take a couple of years more to finish sequencing the genome, but once completed, scientists will be able to create the disease, Taubenberger said. As for smallpox, it might be easier to take a cousin of that virus, such as camelpox or vaccinia virus, and modify a section of its genetic sequence to resemble smallpox, according to New Scientist (see GSN, June 10). Head of Russia’s Vector biological defense laboratory Lev Sandakhchiev said, however, that scientists would eventually be able to manufacture smallpox from scratch. “I am sure scientists may do it sometime,” he said (Sylvia Pagan Westphal, New Scientist, July 17).
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