Publications by authors named "Hannah Heaton"

Unlabelled: Anthrax is a zoonotic disease that occurs naturally in wild and domestic animals but has been used by both state-sponsored programs and terrorists as a biological weapon. A Soviet industrial production facility in Sverdlovsk, USSR, proved deficient in 1979 when a plume of spores was accidentally released and resulted in one of the largest known human anthrax outbreaks. In order to understand this outbreak and others, we generated a Bacillus anthracis population genetic database based upon whole-genome analysis to identify all single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across a reference genome.

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Article Synopsis
  • Drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) is a significant global health issue, making TB the leading infectious cause of death, and precise drug resistance profiling can lead to better, individualized treatments.
  • A pilot study showcased a new targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) method called Next Gen-RDST, which allows rapid analysis of drug resistance directly from patient sputum samples, significantly speeding up results compared to traditional methods.
  • The study found a 94.3% success rate in generating complete drug resistance profiles from Moldovan samples, with a high agreement (97%) with existing testing methods, demonstrating the assay's potential for clinical and public health applications.
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