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By Category: Research

DTRA Seeks Next Generation Sequencing for Biothreat Agents

(Global Biodefense) The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has issued a Request for Information to identify sources with the capability to amplify, sequence, and assemble sequence data for biothreat agents into high-quality genomes. The Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) effort is specifically looking to identify sources that can perform these pathogen characterization tasks for a large  Read More »

Stop study, save Plum Island sanctuary – TheDay.com

Stop study, save Plum Island sanctuaryTheDay.comThe United States opened the facility there in 1954, concluding an island was a safe place to study animal diseases, such as foot-and-mouth and African swine fever, which have the potential to devastate livestock and endanger food supplies. Because of …

UN Official Suggests Formation of a Bioagent Watchdog – Security Management

UN Official Suggests Formation of a Bioagent WatchdogSecurity ManagementIn the existing biological weapons convention, signatories agree that they will not produce or use chemical weapons and that they'll also try and take measures to make sure no one else does, but one United Nations official says there should also be a …

ANTHRAX UDPATE: Quarantine Released – Fowler Tribune

ANTHRAX UDPATE: Quarantine ReleasedFowler TribuneThe Colorado Department of Agriculture's State Veterinarian's office has released four quarantines associated with the recent anthrax cases in Logan County; no premises remain under quarantine. The original case was announced on August 8, 2012. In all …

The Military Is Building Integrated Hybrid Living-Nonliving Robotic Organisms

(Business Insider) In a request released Sept. 14 of this year, the Office Of Naval Research sought to find proposals for “Synthetic Biology Tools for Sensing and Bioprocessing” — essentially hybrid, organic inorganic “sensing” robots. But the language can be deceiving. Googling the first three words — synthetic biology tools — yields research in the  Read More »