First Synthetic Virus Created

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Thursday,
11 July, 2002, 23:28 GMT 00:28 UK
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The BBC's Christine
McGourty
"Public policy research
officials will be looking at
this with alarm"
Dr Eckard Wimmer
"A good bioterrorist could
have put these steps
together"
See also:
12 Jul 02 | Sci/Tech
Q&A: First synthetic virus

21 Feb 01 | San Francisco
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
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Scientists have assembled the first synthetic virus.

The US researchers built the infectious agent from
scratch using the genome sequence for polio.
Mobiles/PDAs
Scientists are divided

about whether a virus is
It was just a matter
Help
alive. For those that think
of time before it was
it is, then this synthetic
Low Graphics
done
artefact would constitute a
simple form of life.
Dr CJ Peters,
University of Texas
Responding to criticisms
that such research could
lead to bioterrorists engineering new lethal viruses,
the scientists behind the experiment said that only
a few people had the knowledge to make it happen.
Feedback
'New reality'
To construct the virus, the researchers say they
followed a recipe they downloaded from the
internet and used gene sequences from a mailorder supplier.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2122000/2122619.stm (1 of 4) [12-07-2002 14:19:17]
Synthetic virus nearing

reality
10 Dec 99 | Sci/Tech
Scientists call for life

creation debate
Internet links:
Eckard Wimmer
Science
State University of New
York
The history of Polio
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the content of external
internet sites
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Having constructed the

virus, which appears to
be identical to its
natural counterpart, the
researchers, from the
University of New York
at Stony Brook, injected
it into mice to
demonstrate that it was
active.
The animals were
paralysed and then
died.
Links to more Sci/Tech

stories are at the foot of
the page.
The polio virus: Now made
by man
"The reason we did it was to prove that it can be

done and it now is a reality," said Dr Eckard
Wimmer, leader of the biomedical research team
and co-author of the study published in the journal
Science.
"This approach has been talked about, but people
didn't take it seriously," said Dr Wimmer.
"Now people have to take it seriously. Progress in
biomedical research has its benefits and it has its
down side. There is a danger inherent to progress
in sciences. This is a new reality, a new
consideration."
'Very easy to do'
According to researcher Jeronimo Cello, the polio
virus assembled in the laboratory is one of the
simplest known viruses. "It was very easy to do,"
he said.
The more dangerous smallpox virus would be
complex and difficult to assemble, but Cello says,
"it would probably in the future be possible".
Dr Wimmer added: "The world had better be
prepared."
Smallpox has been eradicated in the wild, but
specimens are stored in the United States and in
Russia.
Dr Wimmer said
assembling the polio
virus showed that
eradicating a virus in
the wild might not mean
it was gone forever
because biochemists
could now reconstruct
those viruses from
blueprints.
Following last year's
Dr Eckard Wimmer: "The
terrorist and anthrax-by- world had better be
mail attacks, US officials prepared"
became concerned
about the threat of
smallpox and arranged for the manufacture of
enough vaccine to protect the US population.
Matter of time
Dr CJ Peters, director for the Center for Biodefense
at the University of Texas Medical Center at
Galveston, said experts had known for years that it
was theoretically possible to assemble a virus in
the lab.
"We've known this could
be done. We've known it
was just a matter of time
before it was done," he
said.
This is a new reality

Dr Eckard Wimmer
Dr Peters said he was concerned that publicity

about a synthesized virus might lead some people
to believe "that there is nothing that can be done
about bioterrorism - which is not the case".
He added that it was possible that viruses like
Ebola could be assembled in laboratories, but there
were only a few people in the world with that skill.
Polio is on the brink of being eradicated worldwide
and there are plans to stop inoculations against the
disease after it disappears from nature.
Dr Wimmer said that this policy should be
reconsidered. Stopping vaccination could lead to a
generation of people highly susceptible to polio,
enhancing its appeal as a weapon.

The World Health Organization is planning to
stockpile vaccines against a return of polio and Dr
Wimmer said that policy should be followed
everywhere.
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