Scientists at a Canadian research centre say they've mapped the genomic sequence of the virus believed to cause SARS, a move that could take the world a step closer to a reliable test for the illness.

Researchers in B.C. abandoned their usual work on cancer to focus on a sample of a coronavirus from a patient with severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Early Saturday morning, they finished work on the project at Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre in British Columbia. The team was helped by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control and Winnipeg's National Microbiology Laboratory.

Dr. Donald Low
Dr. Donald Low

"This is a huge step forward in the fight to control the spread of SARS," said Dr. Caroline Astell, projects leader at the genome centre.

The facility's director, Dr. Marco Marra, hopes that the genetic blueprint will eventually lead to "a reliable and robust diagnostic test" for the illness.

"It seemed to us that it would be important for us to bend our talents towards an identification of the agent responsible for SARS," Marra told CBC News Saturday. The complete sequence will be posted on the centre's Web site to help SARS researchers around the world, he said.

Since the global outbreak of SARS last month, doctors have focused on the coronavirus as a likely suspect. Many top researchers think the virus, which normally causes a cold, may have mutated – perhaps as it moved from animals to people.

Word of the genomic sequence was hailed by the World Health Organization on the weekend. It was also welcomed by researchers in Toronto, the city hit hardest by SARS in Canada.

Dr. Donald Low, director of microbiology at Mount Sinai Hospital, said the code was mapped with "unprecedented" speed, far more quickly than many people expected.

"It's positive in the sense that it really gives us something to help understand exactly where this thing comes from," Low said in an interview with CBC News Saturday.

"More importantly, (it may reveal) why it's been able to do what it's been able to do – causing disease with such a high mortality rate, and causing such severe disease in those patients who've come down with it."

As of Saturday, 13 people had died of SARS in Canada – all of them around Toronto. There were a total of 223 probable or suspected cases in Ontario, and roughly 275 across the country. Globally, about 2,950 people in 19 countries are believed to have contracted SARS, according to the World Health Organization. At least 119 have died.