Wimmer’s Pentagon-sponsored work was intended to prove a chilling point: any virus with a decoded genome can theoretically be built from scratch. Policy planners have always relied on the fact that bioterror agents like smallpox are all but wiped out and therefore hard to obtain. For now, they still are–the smallpox virus is too complex to be synthesized in today’s labs. But as scientists learn how to make longer strings of DNA, building bigger viruses may become possible “years down the road,” Wimmer says. “If the genome has been published, a virus can be put back into existence. We need to stockpile vaccines.”
Fortunately, the very method of re-creating the viruses may also help build that stockpile. Animals injected with Wimmer’s reconstructed virus got sick, but not as gravely as animals given the “natural” version. Wimmer’s lab had weakened its virus by introducing mutations into the new genetic material. Weakened viruses can be used as vaccines. Wimmer’s team is already laying the groundwork for a possible new one, which means science may have given us one more ability last week: to fight back, even against objects of our own creation.
