Some of the work of the cores, such as media preparation, is based on techniques that go back over a hundred years, even to the beginnings of what became the Wadsworth Center. Other Wadsworth Center cores perform high-quality antigen production, sophisticated image analysis and manipulation, and sequencing and bioinformatic analysis that may be completed in hours to days rather than weeks or months, often providing comprehensive assessment of a full bacterial genome.
Scientists from Wadsworth Center’s Bacteriology Laboratory, and Advanced Genomic Technologies and Bioinformatics cores developed a novel method for detecting Legionella pneumophila, implicated in many outbreaks involving manmade water systems including cooling towers, some with a considerable level of case fatalities and hospitalizations.
During outbreak investigations, when Legionella is isolated from environmental water samples, current methods fail to isolate all Legionella in clinical specimens, which is needed for genome-to-genome comparisons to assess definitive sources of these outbreaks. This new method provides an alternative for such investigations allowing whole genome sequencing directly from a clinical specimen like sputum or autopsy lung tissue.
Beyond the utility of the methodology described in public health surveillance and detection, this publication highlights the critical role of collaboration in the public health sciences – in this Wadsworth Center excels.
A novel hybridization capture method for direct whole genome sequencing of clinical specimens to inform Legionnaires’ disease investigations Weeber P, Singh N, Lapierre P, Mingle L, Wroblewski D, Nazarian EJ, Haas W, Weiss D, Musser KA. A novel hybridization capture method for direct whole genome sequencing of clinical specimens to inform Legionnaires' disease investigations. J Clin Microbiol. 2024 Mar 21:e0130523. doi: 10.1128/jcm.01305-23. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38511938.
The work was funded through a contract from the Association of Public Health Laboratories and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention based on our previous long-term work on Legionella at the Wadsworth Center*.
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*This publication was supported by Cooperative Agreement Number SNU60OE000103, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
Related publication
Improvements to the Success of Outbreak Investigations of Legionnaires' Disease: 40 Years of Testing and Investigation in New York State Schoonmaker-Bopp D, Nazarian E, Dziewulski D, Clement E, Baker DJ, Dickinson MC, Saylors A, Codru N, Thompson L, Lapierre P, Dumas N, Limberger R, Musser KA. Improvements to the Success of Outbreak Investigations of Legionnaires' Disease: 40 Years of Testing and Investigation in New York State. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2021 Jul 27;87(16):e0058021. doi: 10.1128/AEM.00580-21. Epub 2021 Jul 27. PMID: 34085864; PMCID: PMC8315175.