It's been a busy season at the Nucleic Acid Observatory, and we have a lot to share since our last update. As always, If anything here is particularly interesting or if you’re working on similar problems, please reach out!

Wastewater Sequencing

We performed an initial analysis of untargeted sequencing data from aggregated airplane lavatory waste and municipal treatment plant influent that we collected and processed during our Fall 2023 partnership with CDC's Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance program and Ginkgo Biosecurity. We've now analyzed viral abundance and diversity in sequencing data across multiple sample types and wastewater-processing and sequencing protocols. Next steps include further investigating how protocol and sample-type affect specific viruses and bacteria, as well as understanding pathogen temporal dynamics seen in airport versus treatment-plant samples.

We have continued to work with Pardis Sabeti's Lab at the Broad Institute to develop an optimized protocol for preparing RNA sequencing libraries from [...]