So far, working with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Diversa has used its patented protein-analysis technology to identify proteins in the organisms that cause plague and anthrax.
This second kind of analysis is done by lining up lots of known binding sites for a particular protein, comparing them position by position, and so finding out which letter is most likely to occur at which position, and how probable it is that a different letter may sometimes crop up instead.
Analysis of the brains of the euthanized rats revealed decreased levels of Fos, a protein marker of neuronal activity, in the amygdala region of the brain while the olfactory signals appeared to block fear responses.