Nature Medicine | Spoonful of Medicine

Ten years on from anthrax scare, analysis lags behind sequencing

By Amber Dance A decade ago this month, a microbiologist at Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, took a special delivery from the US government. Federal investigators wanted the scientist, Paul Keim, to identify the anthrax that appeared in letters mailed to news organizations and US lawmakers. Overnight, he used PCR to determine that the anthrax sent was the Ames strain, commonly used in research—but that was just the beginning of a scientific investigation that would catapult the still wet-behind-the-ears science of microbial forensics to the forefront of the criminal inquiry. Ten years on, Keim’s PCR-based technique seems downright quaint in 

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