Volume 11, Number 10—October 2005
Dispatch
Detecting Biological Warfare Agents
Table A3
Number of microorganisms in autoclaved bacterial cultures used as templates in polymerase chain reaction; cultures were also used to spike wastewater and prepare mixed bacterial samples*
Organism | DNA copies/mL |
---|---|
Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki | 2.4 × 108 |
B. anthracis Ames | 1.2 × 105 |
Vaccinia virus | 7.7 × 106 |
Yersinia pestis CO-92 | 2.8 × 105 |
Clostridium botulinum A | 3.1 × 107 |
Francisella tularensis Novicida | 1.1 × 106 |
*Naval Medical Research Command (NMRC) did not provide an autoclaved bacterial culture of Brucella melitensis; therefore, no results were obtained for Brucella melitensis other than with synthetic target sequences. The numbers provided by NMRC in this table are based on real- time polymerase chain reaction quantification, where a standard curve was produced with cloned material and used to calculate the results of a gene copy/mL quantification of the autoclaved material.