Sequencing, not random probes, are future of microbiological diagnostics

Okay, I'll admit I take requests.  Throw a topic at me by Twitter or email, and if it piques my interest and I feel like I can say something intelligent, then I'll take it on -- but not necessarily instantly.   That's the genesis of today's item, a tweet from Kyle Serikawa directed at me, asking if anew paper  from groups at Rice and Baylor College of Medicine in Science Advances on a proposed microbial diagnostics (a paper highlighted by Eric Topol) had any legs.Huh. Well, intellectually clever, but isn't#Nanopore already leading the way in direct ID?@OmicsOmicsBlog, have any thoughts?#pathogenshttps://t.co/Ac2JFrbGNT— Kyle Serikawa (@kyleserikawa)September 30, 2016A novel uniform microbial diagnostic platform@ScienceAdvanceshttps://t.co/EPHZrh3Ffxpic.twitter.com/dPEHMci8Jf— Eric Topol (@EricTopol)September 30, 2016 I'll fully confess that I realized upfront that this paper cuts across my usual biases, so I resolved to try to read it with that in mind.  That's not really an excuse in the delay; I did read the paper right away, but the usual conflicts stretched out writing it up.  The paper, in brief, proposes a non-sequencing approach to an area which I had previously thought was going to be totally dominated by sequencing, and I inherently like sequencing.  After reading the paper, I would agree with Kyle: I'm not convinced that this method has legs.  It doesn't help that the paper has some serious issues with describing the me...

Source: Omics! Omics! - October 16, 2016 Category: Bioinformatics Authors: Keith Robison Source Type: blogs