Chimera (virus)

A chimera virus is defined by the United States Department of Agriculture Center for Veterinary Biologics as a "new hybrid microorganism created by joining nucleic acid fragments from two or more different microorganisms in which each of at least two of the fragments contain essential genes necessary for replication."^[1] The term chimera already referred to an individual organism whose body contained cell populations from different zygotes or an organism that developed from portions of different embryos. In mythology, a chimera is a creature formed from parts of different species, such as a hippogriff or a gryphon.

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In fiction

In Mission: Impossible II, the pharmaceutical corporation BioCyte engineered a chimera virus in order to create a need for the vaccine Bellerophon, which they had also created. The vaccine is only effective within twenty hours of exposure.

In Rainbow 6, Tom Clancy posits a plot by a biotech billionaire to wipe out humanity, using a strain of the Ebola virus altered by addition of colon cancer genes.

(A previous biological warfare attack, in Executive Orders, had failed because

• the Ebola virus quickly spreads through a small population, killing everyone, then "burns out" when it runs out of hosts. Ebola has caused a number of small outbreaks but no large epidemic.
• The U.S. Government had launched an effective public health response—led by the CDC and epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins—which contained each outbreak and quarantined all patients. Despite ingenious use of aerosols to spread the virus at a number of large trade shows, dozens died—not millions.)

See also

• Ebola
• Smallpox

References

Notice on the USDA website