A Simpler Way to Get to the Bottom of Mysterious Illnesses in Poor Countries
Senjuti Saha was frustrated. As a microbiologist at the largest pediatric hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she sees a lot of young kids with meningitis—inflammation of the membranes around the brain and spine. In up to 80 percent of those cases, she and her colleagues can’t work out which particular microbe is behind the condition. They draw samples of spinal fluids. They run simple tests. And usually: nothing.
Saha reasoned that she could find some answers through metagenomic sequencing—that is, analyzing the genetic material of everything in her samples and matching those readouts to databases of known microbes. The technique is becoming more common in the developed world, but it’s both technically and financially demanding. Saha spent more than a year trying to find the right collaborators, to no avail. Then she learned about Joe DeRisi.
is a biochemist at the University of virus in 2003. At San Francisco, he has worked to make metagenomics sequencing a regular part of hospital procedure—and that has already helped suffering from of meningitis and other brain infections.
