Anthrax (not the band) - Personal Blog Post 7

A running joke I had with friends when I told them I was taking this class was that I was going to isolate some crazy pathogen and start some new disease outbreak. This was especially perpetuated when I told my friends who go to other campuses that I am not allowed to sample from the mill yard due to the last known case of anthrax in the states being in the area.

So you can imagine my shock when I looked at my combined BLAST results and found that my top hit was Bacillus anthracis, which is the bacteria that forms the toxin that can be isolated into anthrax. Holy cow, I spoke it into existence.

There are some biochemical test results of this isolate that are inconsistent with B. anthracis, like the SBA hemolysis results, as my isolate displayed beta-hemolysis while B. anthracis usually displays gamma-hemolysis.

However, historically the presence of B. anthracis makes sense. I isolated the soil sample from the woods behind my house. In the 1700's, this land was all sheep farm land. As sheep are typically the vessel in which B. anthracis spreads, this would explain its presence in the soil, since that soil has remained relatively unchanged since they 1700's.