Massive Sample Pooling and Sequencing for Prevalence Rates

Timothy Julian of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG) in Switzerland will develop a low-cost approach to monitor the development of resistance to antibiotics, which is a major public health concern. Identifying antibiotic resistance requires sequencing and with current protocols is costly. To address this, they will first enrich samples for 30 antibiotic resistance genes using oligo-coated magnetic beads to increase the efficiency of the sequencing and substantially reduce the cost per sample. They will optimize the gene enrichment step by testing different oligos and protocols.