Workshop 7: Identifying New Pathogens PDF

Workshop 7: Identifying New Pathogens With the basics obtained (first half of semester), and specific examples worked through (second half of semester) -this is a test of your abilities as a medical bacteriologist. In July 1976, the top hit record (a physical thing … not something you could stream!...

Workshop 7: Identifying New Pathogens With the basics obtained (first half of semester), and specific examples worked through (second half of semester) -this is a test of your abilities as a medical bacteriologist. In July 1976, the top hit record (a physical thing … not something you could stream!) was Kiss and Say Goodbye by The Manhattans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtjro7_R3-4). In the football it was the VFL not the AFL, and there were no interstate teams in the VFL – suburban grounds were still used. Fitzroy and South Melbourne still existed. Hawthorn and Carlton were on top of the ladder. Gerry Ford was US President … and I don’t think any of us were born yet! There was an outbreak of a ’new’ disease associated with a State Convention of Legionnaires (generally older men who had been members of the US armed services) at the grand Bellevue- Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. There were 182 cases of a disease that appeared to be spread via the respiratory tract. 29 of the initial infected cohort died (16% mortality rate). The papers outlining the disease (Legionnaire’s disease) and the Gram negative bacterium that caused the disease were published in December 1977, i.e. one year and 5 months after the outbreak! At the time, there was no genomics, no PCR. There was likely limited mass spectrometry. There were animal models, antisera, Gram stain (Gram negative bacterium, subsequently called Legionella pneumophila). The two papers outlining Legionnaires disease (and a recent review about emergence of new infections) have been provided. You hop in your Tardis (a machine that enables time travel) and can take with you all the equipment and reagents you need to investigate this outbreak, and head back to July 1976.  1. How would YOU identify the causative agent? What equipment would you need, and what consumables would need, to pack into the Tardis? 2. Assume they have been able to culture the bacterium in liquid medium. What experiment would you conduct to test for potential pathogens and the products, e.g. toxins? Again, what equipment would you need to take? Assuming you can generate a protein sequence, or a DNA sequence – what other equipment would you need to understand where this sequence is from? 3. If you are going to rely on your animal models, what might you do differently than the authors of the NEJM paper (2) did? YOU WILL NEED TO PACK THE TARDIS WITH EVERYTHING YOU NEED. YOU NEED TO THINK THROUGH WHAT IT IS YOU NEED TO DO, AND HOW YOU WOULD DO IT, USING 1976 RESOURCES, PLUS WHATEVER YOU TAKE WITH YOU.