I-Corps: A bioinformatic software platform for rapid microbe diagnoses in plants

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a plant disease diagnostic test that is faster to develop, quicker turn around to diagnostic results, and more reliable and sensitive than current diagnostic tools. Today’s diagnostic tests are limited and typically cannot determine which strain of flu you might have, or which cold virus, or whether what you have is a bacterially-caused sinus infection.

In addition, the ability to quickly develop a diagnostic test and prove its accuracy is critical to emergency response to a new disease outbreak. Diagnostic technology also must overcome constraints in time to result while keeping costs low. The proposed technology may allow a health practitioner to test for multiple organisms in one test to quickly inform what actions are needed to help the patient.

The proposed technology will be a test for known microbial causes of respiratory disease. all bacterial infections. It may be possible for a patient to be tested for the same cost as current technology tests for just one pathogen. The patient may then be appropriately and specifically treated for their respiratory illness.

This I-Corps project is based on the development of computing software that allows rapid development of pathogen-specific probes and in-silico query of high throughput sequence (HTS) data from any kind of sample. The technology has the potential to be applied in many fields, including veterinary and human medicine, plant pathology, water quality, food safety, and environmental monitoring for biological threats.

Current diagnostic technology requires 10-24 hours to a “yes” or “no” diagnosis per sample, per pathogen.

The initial proof-of-concept has been conducted with 30 citrus pathogens of regulatory concern to the U.S. The proposed technology is capable of diagnosing presence or absence of multiple pathogens in a single sample in as little as 30 minutes to 3 hours from start to finish.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.