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Does New Research Prove
Dr. Ivins Innocent?

From Patricia Doyle, PhD
2-28-9
 
Hello Jeff - What are they trying to say here...? 
 
"The deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax  attacks, scientists say, share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not  found in bacteria from the flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the  biodefence researcher implicated in the crime."
 
"At the American Society for Microbiology's Biodefense and Emerging  Diseases Research Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, on 24 Feb 2009,  Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories  in Albuquerque, New Mexico, presented analyses of 3 letters sent to  the New York Post and to the offices of Senators Tom Daschle and  Patrick Leahy. Spores from 2 of those show a distinct chemical  signature that includes silicon, oxygen, iron, and tin; the 3rd  letter had silicon, oxygen, iron, and possibly also tin, says  Michael. Bacteria from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask did not contain any of  those 4 elements."
 
Patty
 
Date: Wed 25 Feb 2009
Source: Nature News [edited] 
Anthrax Investigation Still Yielding Findings
 
By Reberta Kwok
 
 
The deadly bacterial spores mailed to victims in the US anthrax  attacks, scientists say, share a chemical 'fingerprint' that is not  found in bacteria from the flask linked to Bruce Ivins, the  biodefence researcher implicated in the crime.
 
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleges that Ivins, who  committed suicide last July [2008], was the person responsible for  mailing letters laden with _Bacillus anthracis_ to news media and  congressional offices in 2001, killing 5 people and sickening 17. The  FBI used genetic analyses to trace the mailed spores back to a flask  called RMR-1029, which Ivins could access in his laboratory at the US  Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in  Fort Detrick, Maryland.
 
At the American Society for Microbiology's Biodefense and Emerging  Diseases Research Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, on 24 Feb 2009,  Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories  in Albuquerque, New Mexico, presented analyses of 3 letters sent to  the New York Post and to the offices of Senators Tom Daschle and  Patrick Leahy. Spores from 2 of those show a distinct chemical  signature that includes silicon, oxygen, iron, and tin; the 3rd  letter had silicon, oxygen, iron, and possibly also tin, says  Michael. Bacteria from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask did not contain any of  those 4 elements.
 
The chemical mismatch doesn't necessarily mean that deadly spores  used in the attacks did not originate from Ivins' RMR-1029 flask,  says Jason Bannan, a microbiologist and forensic examiner at the  FBI's Chemical Biological Sciences Unit in Quantico, Virginia. The  RMR-1029 culture was created in 1997, and the mailed spores could  have been taken out of that flask and grown under different  conditions, resulting in varying chemical contents. "It doesn't  surprise me that it would be different," he says. The data suggest  that spores for the 3 letters were grown using the same process, says  Michael. It is not clear how tin and iron made their way into the  culture, he says. Bannan suggests that the growth medium may have  contained iron and tin may have come from a water source.
 
Two cultures of the same anthrax strain [both Ames - Mod.MHJ] grown  using similar processes -- one from Ivins' lab, the other from a US  Army facility in Utah -- showed [a] silicon-oxygen signature but did  not contain tin or iron.
 
The [ASM] meeting offered scientists who collaborated with the FBI  during the investigation an opportunity to share detailed data. The  analyses will eventually be published in peer-reviewed journals, the  FBI has said.
 
Jacques Ravel, a genomics scientist at the University of Maryland  School of Medicine in Baltimore, described his team's efforts to find  genetic differences between various cultures of the Ames strain, the  _B. anthracis_ strain identified in the anthrax letters. At first,  the team was surprised to find that the DNA sequences of a reference  Ames strain and Ames samples from the investigation, such as bacteria  isolated from the spinal fluid of the 1st victim, were exactly the  same.
 
For help, the researchers turned to variants found [in the letters]  by a team at USAMRIID. Patricia Worsham and her colleagues had  noticed differences in shape, colour, and rate of spore formation  even within a single anthrax culture. Ravel's team identified the  genetic mutations associated with 4 variants and developed an assay  for one of them, called Morph E. Researchers at Commonwealth  Biotechnologies in Richmond, Virginia, and the Midwest Research  Institute's Florida Division in Palm Bay created assays for [the] 3  other variants.
 
The FBI then used that arsenal of tests to pin down the origins of  the anthrax letters, matching the mix of genetic variants in the  mailed spores to Ivins' RMR-1029 flask. "It has the genetic  signatures that identify it as the most likely source of the growth,"  says Bannan.
 
Ravel also sequenced the genome of a _Bacillus subtilis_ strain that  was found in one of the letters. That sample did not match a _B.  subtilis_ strain found in Ivins' lab, says Bannan, but the bacterial  contamination still could have come from somewhere else in Ivins'  institution [that is, USAMRIID].
 
The FBI has asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to convene  an independent panel of experts to review the anthrax investigation  data. The academy is still in the process of drawing up a contract  with the FBI that lays out an agreement to perform the study, says  NAS spokeswoman Christine Stencel.
 
Thomas DeGonia, Ivins' lawyer at Venable LLP in Rockville, Maryland,  maintains Ivins' innocence.
 
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090225/full/news.2009.120.html
 
 
--
Communicated by:
Dave Altimari
<mailto:DAltimari@courant.com>DAltimari@courant.com
[The tin and iron were not in the mix in the RMR-1029 flask, nor was  silicon. And the flask contents date from 1997. A lot can happen in  4-5 years (1997-2001).
 
RMR-1029 was a conglomeration of 13 production runs of spores by  Dugway, for USAMRIID, and an additional 22 production runs of spore  preparations at USAMRIID that were all pooled into this mixture. It  was a total of over 164 liters of spore production, concentrated down  to about a liter. Source:  http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/AnthraxRoundtableAnnotated.html#RMR-1029>
 
RMR-1029 was a one-time operation to create a "gold standard" for  vaccine testing. Many precautions would have been taken in those  preparations, but due to the unusual size of the production runs the  4 mutations appeared. - Mod MHJ]
 
******
[2]
Date: Fri 27 Feb 2009
Source: New Scientist [edited]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126974.100-revealed-scientific-
evidence-for-the-2001-anthrax-attacks.html
Revealed: scientific evidence for the 2001 anthrax attacks
 
----------------------------------------------------------
 
Key forensic evidence in the US anthrax attacks of 2001 has been  revealed. The FBI had previously prevented the scientists involved  from speaking publicly about their findings in case this interfered  with court proceedings, but last August [2008], after chief suspect  Bruce Ivins committed suicide, the case collapsed and the FBI lifted  many of the restrictions. This week [24 Feb 2009], some of the  scientists involved revealed their results at a scientific meeting in  Baltimore, Maryland.
 
These show how the FBI traced the spores used in the attacks to a  single flask at a US government lab, but they don't explain why the  FBI made Ivins -- who worked at the US Army Medical Research  Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) -- the chief suspect.
 
In late 2001, envelopes containing dry anthrax spores were sent to a  number of US media outlets and politicians, leading to 5 deaths.  Later that year, Paul Keim at the Northern University of Arizona in  Flagstaff identified the anthrax bacterium used in the attack as the  US army's 'Ames' strain. The FBI then obtained 1072 anthrax samples  from the 18 labs it knew to have Ames and got several research  groups, including Keim's, to compare their genomes with that of the  strain used in the attacks. The hope was this would uncover mutations  that would finger one lab as the source.
 
But Keim and his colleagues told the Baltimore meeting that initial  reports that useful mutations had been found were misleading. The  full genome sequences revealed "no genetic differences at all," says  Keim. Instead, the researchers say, the key clues came from a lucky  discovery. A technician, also at USAMRIID, had noticed patches of  unusual-looking spores in cultures of the attack anthrax, and  recultured just those. Keim and colleagues sequenced their genomes  and found 10 mutations that differed from the common Ames sequence.  Because the spores made up a fraction of the total, these "minority"  mutations hadn't shown up initially.
 
Next the team developed highly sensitive tests to screen all 1072  samples for 4 of the mutations. Eight samples had all 4 [mutations].  One came from a flask labelled RMR-1029 that Ivins was responsible  for at USAMRIID. The other 7 came from cultures taken from that  flask, only one of which was not located at USAMRIID. So while these  findings show the attack spores came from one of these cultures, the  FBI has gone further in concluding the attack came directly from the  RMR-1029 flask.
 
Another question is how the attacker turned the water-based slurry of  spores in the flask to the fine, dry powder in the letters.
 
Joseph Michael of the Sandia National Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico,  used specialised electron microscopy to show that 75 per cent of the  attack spores had incorporated silicon into their coats while growing  .  As spores taken directly from RMR-1029 following the attacks had no  silicon in their coats, and the other 7 genetic matches had either  none or a lower percentage, the attack spores must have been  recultured before they were posted.
 
During this process, they would have shed their coats, multiplied,  then turned back into spores. Was Ivins's level of expertise needed  to turn these recultured spores into dry powder? Michael's images  show the attack anthrax contained spore clumps, unlike professionally  produced powders.
 
The FBI may have evidence to show Ivins was the link between RMR-1029  and the envelopes, though with civil suits from Ivins' and the  victims' families pending, the bureau won't be revealing it soon. For  now, the researchers say their studies nail the spores as coming from  the flask, but not the identity of the attacker.
Byline: Debora MacKenzie
--
Communicated by:
Dave Altimari
DAltimari@courant.com
[It will be interesting to see what the FBI's conclusive evidence is  directly linking Bruce Ivins to the letter products. The latter  contained 65-75 per cent of the spores with Si in their spore coats,  not 75 per cent as reported by MacKenzie. The USAMRIID test culture  had only 6 per cent and a Dugway product 30 per cent; both had been  grown on Leighton-Doi media. An interesting paper by WG Murrell,  "Chemical composition of spores & spore structures", in 'The  Bacterial Spore', eds GW Hurst & A Hurst, Academic Press, NY, 1969,  reported the Si content by dry weight in a range of spores with a  mean value of 0.53 per cent, maximum 1.2 per cent and minimum 0.2 per  cent. The existing literature would indicate that high values of Si  in spores is unusual, if not exceptional.
 
In conclusion, the attack spores, somehow derived from RMR-1029, must  have been recultured before they were processed and posted if they  had such a high Si presence, and also to have acquired iron and tin,  neither of which were/are in the RMR-1029 spores. - Mod.MHJ]
 
Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics Univ of West Indies Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message board at: http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php Also my new website: http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/ Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa Go with God and in Good Health 
 
 
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