Foundational Technology A critical innovation that has been developed in the last decade is a technology called metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS). Traditional DNA sequencing attempts to identify a target organism or strand by searching for a specific DNA or RNA strand. While this has its advantages, it does make it difficult in situations where, for example, you don’t know what organism you’re looking for. With mNGS, you can take a sample of any biological origin, sequence it, and then it will pull out all of the different strands of DNA. You can then cross-reference this DNA with a central database of all organisms and determine which corresponds to each strand. In a medical context, you can use this to identify what a pathogen is without even having to consider the symptoms, or you can determine if the pathogen is even known to medicine in the first place.
Revolutionizing Disease Detection with Data
Revolutionizing Disease Detection with Data
Revolutionizing Disease Detection with Data
Foundational Technology A critical innovation that has been developed in the last decade is a technology called metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS). Traditional DNA sequencing attempts to identify a target organism or strand by searching for a specific DNA or RNA strand. While this has its advantages, it does make it difficult in situations where, for example, you don’t know what organism you’re looking for. With mNGS, you can take a sample of any biological origin, sequence it, and then it will pull out all of the different strands of DNA. You can then cross-reference this DNA with a central database of all organisms and determine which corresponds to each strand. In a medical context, you can use this to identify what a pathogen is without even having to consider the symptoms, or you can determine if the pathogen is even known to medicine in the first place.