FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — New walls have sprung up around Paul Keim's workplace to safeguard the deadly vials kept within it. He has new keys, an electronic security card--even bought his first pager so he'll always be reachable.
The reason is anthrax. The lanky, bespectacled scientist is a world leader in the genetics of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that killed five, sickened at least a dozen and scared countless more in this fall's rash of terror by mail.
Largely due to Keim, scientists can now use DNA profiles to distinguish one anthrax sample from another, a feat once deemed impossible because of the bug's extreme sameness. Whether gleaned from dead yaks in Nepal or bison carcasses in Canada, anthrax DNA varies in only the subtlest of ways.
Keim's group has already used these methods to identify the anthrax strains that the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo used in 1993 in failed bioterrorism attempts. They've shown that an October anthrax outbreak among cattle in Santa Clara County was probably caused by naturally occurring anthrax and not bioterrorism.
Federal law enforcement officials say Keim has played an important role in analyzing the spores used in this fall's anthrax attacks, giving them one of their best tools to help narrow their investigation. (Keim refuses to confirm or deny any involvement in the case.) A scientist at quiet Northern Arizona University, Keim never anticipated all the attention. Not the new walls, the unending calls, and certainly not the experience of finding himself dubbed a "bioterrorism warrior" by the popular press.
His is a tale of what happens when basic bench science and world events collide--when a researcher, quietly toiling, enters the glare of celebrity after the knowledge he's patiently acquired suddenly becomes a matter of popular demand.
The experience is even odder, Keim says, because anthrax is just one of many life forms he has studied and not one he would have predicted to bring him fame.
Keim's best-known work was in the kinder, gentler genomes of plants: He is credited with helping drag soybean-breeding into the modern molecular era. Once he even testified in a murder trial in which DNA from a tree linked the suspect to the site where a body was found.
And he has studied a menagerie of animals over the years: small snails, trout, prairie dogs and mountain lions.
