Research Spurs Rapid Diagnosis of Biological Threats

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_http://www.mitre.org/news/digest/advanced_research/04_07/a_diagnosis.html_

(http://www.mitre.org/news/digest/advanced_research/04_07/a_diagnosis.html)

Research Spurs Rapid Diagnosis of Biological Threats

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April 2007

If you have a high fever, runny nose, and body aches, you might think you

have the flu or a cold. But if you're a soldier out in the field in today's

meaner world, you could be infected by a biological or chemical warfare

agent—

but not know for sure. By the time you find out that you've been hit by the

real thing, it may be too late to save you and other exposed people.

To shorten the time in diagnosing whether a whole battalion has a stomach

ache from food poisoning or has been exposed to an artificially induced toxin,

MITRE is working with DNA microarrays to develop a rapid diagnosis system.

Microarrays are hundreds or thousands of microscopic dots of gene samples on a

single microscope slide. The gene samples, or sequences, are so small that you

can't see them with the naked eye.

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