Qiagen joins consortium to research urban pathogens

Qiagen has announced a new collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine that aims to map microbial genomes in 54 cities.

The global study will deliver insights into the prevalence of pathogens, including antimicrobial resistance, in urban environments, with DNA and RNA samples to be collected from high-traffic areas in subway systems, buses and parks.

It will expand upon a metagenomic portrait of microbes collated from New York's subways in 2015, using Qiagen's sample technologies and library preparation workflows to extract and prepare genomic materials for analysis.

Specifically, the company's MO BIO PowerSoil sample technology kits will be used for sample extraction, while its QIAseq FX DNA library preparation kits will enable reliable next-generation sequencing.

Once the study is complete, the data, methods, techniques and results will all be made open to the public and free to use.

Colin Baron, senior director and head of product management for next-generation sequencing life sciences at Qiagen, said: "Mapping the unseen genomes and epigenomes of cities across six continents is an exciting effort that illustrates the potential for metagenomics to create new insights into interactions among humans, our environment and the microbes that have an impact on our health."