Discovering Novel Pathogens
February 13, 2008 | Source: Technology Review
The next-generation sequencing technology used to assemble James Watson’s genome has been used to identify novel pathogens.
This is the first time that “unbiased high-throughput pyrosequencing” (or “454 sequencing”) has been used to probe for the cause of an infectious-disease outbreak in humans. Several other identification techniques failed to identify the never-before-seen virus.