health

Long-Read Sequencing: Solving Genetic Diagnostics Challenges

Sebastian Lunk from the Victorian Clinical Genetics Services (VCGS) in Australia spoke at London Calling 2025 on “Long-read sequencing and adaptive sampling solve complex diagnostic conundrums.” VCGS is a not-for-profit subsidiary of Murdoch Children’s Hospital with forty years of clinical genetic service delivery and 20,000 diagnostic tests performed annually. With 330 staff, they have the […]
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Case Studies on 16S rRNA Sequencing in Clinical Diagnostics

Dr. Anna Smielewska, a consultant virologist in the UK, spoke at ESCMID Global about 16S rRNA sequencing in healthcare settings. The title of the session was “Implementing portable, real-time 16S rRNA sequencing in the healthcare sector enhances antimicrobial stewardship.” Smielewska works with the Liverpool University Hospitals, several hospitals with a broad range of cases. The […]
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Teaching Microbiology and Climate Change: Lessons from ASM Microbe 2023

Tonight I watched JMBE Live! at ASM Microbe 2023. Stanley Maloy interviewed Kelly Ramirez, Zachary Freeman, and Arpita Bose. Ramirez spoke about bringing excitement about microbiology to students and courses early on! Freeman shared how they started Schoolyard Microbiology and how they collect soils from participants and learn about their microbiomes. Bose had an interest […]
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Revamping the Central Dogma: Teaching with Chromogenic Proteins

Tonight I watched another JMBE Live session with Greg Phillips from the University of Georgia and Nancy Boury from Iowa State University. Stanley Maloy, Editor in Chief of JMBE, was the moderator. Maloy spoke about how this Curriculum article revisits the Central Dogma. Boury and Phillips were together for several years at Iowa State. The […]
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Metagenomics Explained: From DNA Reads to MAGs

Tonight I continued watching the ISME19 Workshop by KBase: “From Reads to Function, Day 1.” Kelly Wrighton presented on “Metagenomics 101: From Reads to Bins.” Wrighton is at Colorado State. Wrighton co-runs the Microbial Ecosystems Lab. They defined microbiome as “the study of microorganisms, their genomes, and their surrounding chemical and other environmental conditions.” I appreciate how this […]
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BugSeq’s Innovative Approaches to Virus Detection

Tonight I continued watching the ONT webinar on advances in genomic profiling of respiratory viral pathogens. The second speaker was Nick Gauthier from BugSeq. The title of their session was “Translating metagenomics to the clinic.” The BugSeq team is working to develop clinical metagenomic pathogen agnostic approaches. BugSeq started working on an ONT mNGS platform […]
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Building Effective Multi-Disease Surveillance Systems

Tonight, I started watching the Oxford Nanopore Technologies London Calling 2024 expert panel on “Building a rapid, targeted, and responsive infectious disease system.”Aaron Pomerantz, the Associate Director of Global Segment Marketing at ONT, helped facilitate the session. Dr. Ines Hassan from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change started. Hassan helps encourage the development and […]
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Transforming Cancer Care with Nanopore Sequencing

I continued watching the “Nanopore Sequencing Ultra Rich Data for Cancer Research” webinar. It featured Sayonika Mohanta, the Market Segment Manager for Methylation with Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT). Mathilde Fiser from the Curie Institute presentation had the title “Transforming Cancer Care: Redefining Cancer Characterization and Predisposition Insights through Nanopore Sequencing.” Fiser explained that the identification of germline alterations […]
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