This is a hypothetical situation. Many people in a city suddenly come down with

Question

This is a hypothetical situation. Many people in a city suddenly come down with a serious illness. All the victims have in common is that they were all at a mall at a certain time five days before. Could terrorists have released a cloud of viruses or bacteria upwind of the mall? You work for the CDC and you must find an answer. Ten samples of bacterial or viral have been isolated from the victims and sequenced; they are in a file on blackboard called "bioterrorism. fasta" (remember, fasta" files are just text files so if your computer can't open it try just changing the file name to "bioterrorism.fasta.txt" or "bioterrorism.txt". Using the skills you learned during the bioinformatics recitation, identify each DNA sample. Some of the DNA molecules are very short, and have been partially degraded. You will notice that some of the sequences are liberally sprinkled with Ns as well as As, Gs, Cs, and Ts; "N" stands for "nucleotide" and means that the nucleotide at that position could not be sequenced. Some judgment is called for as you interpret your results. Everyone has bacteria and viruses in his or her body, but only sometimes they can cause disease. You are looking for exotic pathogens with bioterrorism potential (e.g., anthrax or smallpox rather than the common cold, see here). Analyze the samples to determine if there is any evidence of bioterror agents. What species did you find?

Explanation / Answer

Terror attacks have improvised themselves to use more modern and sophisticated biological material to directly affect and make an impact on people through the use of harmful organisms. Here we have a hypothetical situation where we are facing a Bioterror attack, a large group of people in a town has come under is scanner.

Answering the first phase, whether they could be attacked upwind to a mall while the crowd was present there? Yes, this could be possible as the biomaterial could be an airborne powder, particle of sample through airways, even could be spread though water supplies. So the chances are fairly high as the gathering of the crowd in a mall have made them an easy pray and the bacteria and viruses been recovered have that potential to harm.

Now Biological threats are more affordable, easy to handle and also deploying them has become an easy task.

To answer that to characterize the harmful pathogens here is our challenge and also identify few names.

As Biological Warfare has its own properties and particulars, we know that this causes a massive numbers of casualties, also lengthy and prolonged illnesses are associated with it. Contagious and easily borne by air, water or media like food. These gents also has the ability to mimic endemic infectious diseases, further complicating diagnosis, they could be easily obtained.

Here it is described as biological agents are packed with Na's and they have got small and even fragmented sequences in a .fasta file. This agents could be coming under -

Category A- and the characteristic is easily disseminated or transmitted person to person, high mortality, like Anthrax, Smallpox.

Category B- Agents those are having moderate affects, low mortality- Anthrax.

23. So this Anthrax could be easily spread through air, and when they are inhaled or entered into a body through cut or wound or even through food they cause a serious disease, they are the pathogens named Bacillus anthracis.

Consuming anthrax causes Inflammation of the intestinal tract, nausea, vomiting blood, etc.

Another one, the small pox is the virus responsible for this is Variola virus. Even this has got two forms, one is Major and another is Minor.

Another two forms is also there and they are the hemorrhagic and the malignant forms.

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