ABSTRACT
Attempts of small countries and terrorist groups to obtain biological
warfare agents have escalated the need to provide the armed forces
and civilians with miniature, easy-to-use, disposable instruments
for detection and identification of potentially hazardous biological
agents. Traditional methods for the detection and identification of
pathogens lack the speed and sensitivity to be of use in the field,
since they are not real time or even typically completed in a single
day. Oneway of dealingwith this problem is to improve the biorecep-
tor that binds the analyte, which is one of the essential elements of
any immuno-based detector device.1 Molecular recognition systems
that can be used for rapid identification can improve response time
and thus avert or reduce the number of casualties associated with
a potential bioterrorism or biowarfare event.2 One of the newer
techniques being developed for construction of bioreceptors for
pathogen detection involves phage display technology.
