First de novo Virus Synthesis

In a Science magazine report this past summer, Eckard Wimmer, Jeronimo Cello and Anika Paul, Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, described the first de novo biochemical synthesis of a virus, based on published gene sequence information and using "off the shelf" commercially available DNA material. The implications of this historic achievement for making much larger viruses or bacteria from scratch are not immediately clear; the genome sequence of the poliovirus is very small in comparison to viruses such as smallpox. The theoretical possibility that current knowledge could permit the creation of potential agents of biological warfare generated intense media interest around the world.

The project was supported by DOD's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but its significance goes well beyond the current urgency. Prof. Wimmer, whose laboratory has been studying poliovirus for three decadesand who worked with his colleagues for two years on this project, points out that the emergence of polio epidemics in the early 20th century highlights the complexity of policy issues related to biomedical progress. It is a powerful irony that the epidemics are traceable in part to modern hygiene, which broke the chain of natural immunization that had previously provided protection against this then-near-ubiquitous virus through a combination of infant infection combined with defense by maternal antibodies. A public health condition unprecedented in world history will be created when the approaching global eradication of wild types not only frees the world of poliovirus, but the consequent termination of vaccination programs thereafter produces a world population devoid of poliovirus antibodies.

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