"Using the NCBI Pathogen Detection Portal for Surveillance" – The NY CoE hosted a webinar on March 7, 2018. The webinar was delivered by William Wolfgang, PhD and Samantha Wirth, MS from NYSDOH Wadsworth Center, and William Klimke, PhD from NCBI. Outbreak surveillance of enteric bacterial pathogens is being transformed by the widespread availability of whole genome sequencing and bioinformatic pipelines. While many state laboratories have access to sequencing technology, access to pipelines to analyze the data can be problematic. The NCBI Pathogen portal can serve to bridge this gap. This presentation will provide practical guidance to using the portal. The handout used in this presentation can be found here.
FDA Grand Rounds: GenomeTrakr: How a Large Network of Sequencing Laboratories is Advancing Food Safety and Public - Foodborne disease outbreaks are responsible for about 48 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths every year in the U.S., according to CDC data. As the world becomes even more interconnected, FDA has recognized the urgency of creating new approaches and better tools to detect food contamination and stop outbreaks in their tracks. The FDA-established GenomeTrakr is an innovative response to this global public health challenge that uses a cutting-edge technology called Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS). This presentation will discuss the example of the 2015 Virginia sprout outbreak, where Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) provided the lead.