May 2006 correspondance between James Randerson and Drew Endy

Abstract

I am a science journalist with the Guardian newspaper in London. We are a national daily paper. I am hoping to put together an investigative piece on how easy (or not) it would be for a would-be terrorist to put together the genome of a nasty organism like anthrax from scratch. For the purposes of the piece I am planning to approach a DNA synthesis company and ask them to make a fragment of a nasty toxin gene. Some companies have safeguards in place to prevent this kind of thing but others do not. (continued)