How DNA Sequencing In Sewers Could Detect Disease Outbreaks - Forbes
▻http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2014/12/11/sewer-m-d
Disease #prevention and mapmaking have been inextricably intertwined since 1854, when an English physician named John Snow plotted a cholera outbreak on a grid to locate–and shut down–a bacteria-tainted water pump, inventing the modern science of epidemiology along the way.
In 2010 geneticist Eric Schadt, then the chief scientific officer at DNA sequencer maker Pacific Biosciences, had a brainstorm as to how to update Snow’s breakthrough for the modern age. The germs that infect us–everything from influenza to measles to bubonic plague–wind up in our waste. Why not look for them by using DNA technology to sequence raw sewage?