American scientists managed to extract the DNA of the anthrax pathogen from the bodies of two victims of the epidemic that occurred in Sverdlovsk in 1979 as a result of the release of spores from a secret laboratory. Scientists managed to decipher the genome of the microbe and find out details about the Soviet biological weapon. This is reported in the bioRxiv preprint journal.
Under natural conditions, the chance of an anthrax epidemic among humans is minimal, but its causative agent Bacillus anthracis produces spores - dry capsules in which microbes can remain in the soil for decades. Trillions of these spores can be turned into bio-weapons and sprayed over crowds: the infection will kill hundreds of people even before the authorities determine the cause of the disaster.
The USSR signed the 1972 Convention prohibiting the development and storage of biological weapons, but did not close its secret programs in this area. The 1979 incident was initially linked to the meat of infected livestock by the authorities, but in 1992 Boris Yeltsin allowed American scientists to investigate the outbreak. The researchers concluded that the cause was the release of a cloud of anthrax spores into the atmosphere from the military biological laboratory of military town 19.
Now another team of scientists was able to isolate the DNA of Bacillus anthracis from the remains of the victims transferred in the 90s to the United States. It turned out that the Soviet military did not try to modify the bacterium's genome, making it more resistant to antibiotics and vaccines. The Sverdlovsk strain differs from ordinary anthrax by only 13 base pairs. Apparently, the military specifically fought against the inevitable acceleration of evolution when growing bacteria in the laboratory.
Finally, the discovery by American scientists will make it possible, in their opinion, to test whether Russia actually destroyed all biological weapons in the 1990s. If the genome of Bacillus anthracis, which will be identified in the victims of future outbreaks, coincides with the genome of the Sverdlovsk strain, then, according to American scientists, this will mean that part of the Soviet stocks was sold to bioterrorists.
