In recent years public health authorities have raised concern that many strains of Chlamydia trachomatis, a bacterium that is the most common cause of sexually transmitted infections around the world, can be missed by conventional genetic tests. A mutation in part of its genomc can make Chlamydia undetectable by the most commonly used tests.
The Chlamydia tests are performed in a microfluidic cassette platform and data is returned about an hour after sample collection. In comparison, standard tests take a day or longer.
Most infections are asymptomatic but left untreated, Chlamydia infection can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and ectopic pregnancy. It is also a Ray Ban online leading cause of blindness in developing countries.
Microbial geneticist Tim Read at Emory has been collaborating with Deborah Dean at Children’s Hospital Oakland and the Massachusetts firm NetBio to develop a fast, accurate and sensitive genetic test for Chlamydia.
“We used tools that were developed initially to answer basic scientific questions,” Read says. “We compared multiple genomes of C. trachomatis to find targets that would work across a broad selection of bacterial strains.”