Evaluation of paraffin baiting technique for rapid isolation of atypical mycobacteria.

conglomeration of an array of well established fields, such as microbial genomics, phylogenetics, forensic informatics and classical microbiology. Unlike public health investigations, microbial forensic investigation goes further to associate the source of the causative agent with a specific individual or group. Microbial forensics will be most effective if there is sufficient basic scientific information concerning microbial genetics, evolution, physiology and ecology. A scientific assessment on microbial forensics released by American Academy of Microbiology pointed out that, simply studying the pathogen without understanding biotic and abiotic environmental backgrounds will lead to false confidence in our ability to detect it. Molecular techniques have been used for years to trace outbreaks of microbial diseases, a practice called molecular epidemiology. In fact, there are currently surveillance systems that store and make available DNA fingerprints for microbes that are likely to be involved in nosocomial infections and food borne infections. PulseNet of the U.S. Centre for Disease Control (CDC), is one of such surveillance system for tracking infections such as Salmonella. Clearly, biological weapons are assigned high priority in homeland security, defence, counterproliferation, nonproliferation, intelligence and counterterrorist programmes, resources and policies. In order to strengthen its active defence against intentions, development, and use of these weapons, it is now time for the world community to establish a comprehensive forensic capability to effectively attribute biological weapons for investigative, intelligence, prosecutive, diplomatic, and policy purposes. Nevertheless, aggressive research programme are needed for forensic trace, microchemical analysis, trace evidence analysis coupled with microbial forensics so that the discipline of microbiology and/ or forensic science will grow and bear fruit for national security.