This tech base award has close links with the Viral Identification Characterization Initiative (VICI) ER LDRD. The tech base extends developed code to enable a capability for biodefense, biosurveillance, and clinical diagnostics. The code enables the design of signatures to detect and discover viruses, without relying on prior assumptions as to the species of virus present. This approach for primer and signature design contrasts with more traditional PCR approaches, in which a major weakness is the unlikelihood of viral discovery or detection of unanticipated species. There were three crucial areas of the project that were not research and development, so could not be funded under the ER LDRD, but were a reduction to practice of the existing VICI algorithm that were necessary for the success of overall computational project goals. These areas, funded by the 2007 Tech Base award, were: (1) improvement of the code developed under the VICI LDRD by incorporating T{sub m} and free energy predictions using Unafold; (2) porting of code developed on the kpath Sun Solaris cluster to the Yana and Zeus LC machines; and (3) application of that code to perform large numbers of simulations to determine parameter effects.