Researchers at McMaster University have developed a new tool that could help provide early warning of rare and unknown viruses in the environment and identify potentially deadly bacterial pathogens which cause sepsis, among other uses. Specifically, the team developed a probe design that allows for simultaneous targeted capture of diverse metagenomic targets. The findings were published in Cell Reports: Methods.
The team successfully tested the newly developed probes on the entire family of coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. The probes provide a shortcut by targeting, isolating, and identifying the DNA sequences that are shared among related organisms, most often due to evolutionary history or ancestry.
“There are thousands of bacterial pathogens, and being able to determine which one is present in a patient’s blood sample could lead to the correct treatment faster when time is very important,” explains Zachery Dickson, lead author of the study. “The probe makes identification much faster, meaning we could potentially save people who might otherwise die.” They also demonstrated the effectiveness of probes for capturing the incredibly wide array of pathogens associated with sepsis.
"We currently need faster, cheaper, and more succinct ways to detect pathogens in human and environmental samples that democratize the hunt and this pipeline does exactly that,” concludes Hendrik Poinar, lead author.