Ebolavirus is responsible for a deadly hemorrhagic fever that has claimed thousands of lives in Africa and could become a global health threat. Because of the danger of infection, novel Ebola research is restricted to BSL-4 laboratories; this slows progress due to both the cost and expertise required to operate these laboratories. The development of a safe surrogate would speed research and reduce risk to researchers.

Two highly conserved Ebola gene segments---from the glycoprotein and nucleoprotein genes---were designed with modifications preventing expression while maintaining sequence integrity, spliced into high copy number plasmids, cloned into E.coli, and tested for stability, safety, and potential research applications. The surrogates were stable over 2--3 months, had a negligible mutation rate (< 0.165% over the experiment), and were detectable in human blood down to 5.8E3--1.17E 4 surrogates/mL. These protocols could be used to safely simulate other pathogens and promote infectious disease treatment and detection research.