Novel B. anthracis canSNP assays developed in this report.

aUsing ‘Ames ancestor’ genome (GenBank ref: AE017334).bUnderlined nucleotides indicate the position of the SNP; bolded nucleotides indicate an introduced GC clamp that increases the melt temperature of the primer, thus enhancing allelic discrimination [13]; small-case nucleotides represent deliberate mismatches incorporated into the allele-specific primers.cAll assays were optimized on an Applied Biosystems ABI PRISM 7900HT Sequence Detection System using default thermocycling parameters, with the addition of the dissociation curve [13], [14].