This chapter will address some of the many issues associated with the identification of signatures based on genomic DNA/RNA, which can be used to identify and characterize pathogens for biodefense and microbial forensic goals. For the purposes of this chapter, we define a signature as one or more strings of contiguous genomic DNA or RNA bases that are sufficient to identify a pathogenic target of interest at the desired resolution and which could be instantiated with particular detection chemistry on a particular platform. The target may be a whole organism, an individual functional mechanism (e.g., a toxin gene), or simply a nucleic acid indicative of the organism. The desired resolution will vary with each program's goals but could easily range from family to genus to species to strain to isolate. The resolution may not be taxonomically based but rather pan-mechanistic in nature: detecting virulence or antibiotic-resistance genes shared by multiple microbes. Entire industries exist around different detection chemistries and instrument platforms for identification of pathogens, and we will only briefly mention a few of the techniques that we have used at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to support our biosecurity-related work since 2000. Most nucleic acid based detection chemistries involve …

Interview with John Henry Faulk, an English professor from Austin, Texas, about his education and teaching career at the University of Texas, interest in folklore, race relations in the South, his experience participating in the Medical Corps during WWII, time spent with J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek, and Walter Prescott Webb, and the lawsuits he participated in.

Ledger containing minutes of the city Board of Commissioners in Abilene, Texas documenting the group's discussions and activities from March 9, 1928 to June 26, 1931. An index with names is included at the front.