Specific Biological Agent Taggants

摘要

The preliminary data presented here suggests that direct coating of biological agent with DNA capture elements and organic semiconductor (DALM) with chelated rare earths such as scandium, europium or neodymium can be used to track the agent, even when the biological components have been subsequently destroyed. The use of these three taggant components in conjunction with each other affords the opportunity to determine the presence of the biological agent by several methods---laser induced plasma spectroscopy, thermochemiluminescence, mass spectroscopy, polymerase chain reaction (PCR; if the primers are left on the DCEs or the agentis own DNA is used as the source of the amplicon). The specific DCE-labeling or PCR allows for confirmation of physical measurement results as specific to the agent. Keywords: Aptamers, anthrax, Bacillus thuringiensis, laser induced breakdown spectroscopy, rare earths, DCEs, diazoluminomelanin