[Ichneumon]

but reading down into the middle of a scientific paper by a guy named Read, there is mention that what was in the envelopes was a 50/50% mixture of genotype 62 and genotype 62 with an inversion on the plasmid. Now I am an entomologist, not a geneticist, but from what they describe of the inversion, which is like a zipper being put in upside down, it is a little more complicated than I would want to believe occurred in nature.

Actually, DNA inversions of various kinds occur frequently and easily in nature.

The paper you're probably referring to is:

Comparative genome sequencing for discovery of novel polymorphisms in Bacillus anthracis, by Read TD, Salzberg SL, Pop M, Shumway M, Umayam L, Jiang L, Holtzapple E, Busch JD, Smith KL, Schupp JM, Solomon D, Keim P, Fraser CM

Abstract: Comparison of the whole-genome sequence of Bacillus anthracis isolated from a victim of a recent bioterrorist anthrax attack with a reference reveals 60 new markers that include single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), inserted or deleted sequences, and tandem repeats. Genome comparison detected four high-quality SNPs between the two sequenced B. anthracis chromosomes and seven differences among different preparations of the reference genome. These markers have been tested on a collection of anthrax isolates and were found to divide these samples into distinct families. These results demonstrate that genome-based analysis of microbial pathogens will provide a powerful new tool for investigation of infectious disease outbreaks.

I don't have access to the full text, but I see nothing in the abstract that raises any red flags about anything "unnatural" found in the anthrax genome, and if they had noticed anything of that kind, that would have been the sort of thing that they'd have headlined in the abstract.

If you have access to the text, could you post the relevant portion here -- the part concerning the inversion you felt might be "too complicated"?