Chasing the bacteria in the river Cam with real-time DNA sequencing.
Year by year, Cambridge rowers, swimmers and punters experience serious infections associated with pathogens from the city’s local river, the Cam. An information and research framework that targets the involved bacterial culprits is still lacking. The PuntSeq project (puntseq.co.uk) provides an in-depth resolution of the Cam’s bacterial and pathogenic landscape by applying novel portable and real-time sequencing approaches to DNA extracted from the river’s water. In my talk, I will firstly introduce the technical details behind the project, to then present our results from a study based on water samples from ten locations (ranging from Grantchester Meadow via Bridge of Sighs to the Baits Bite Lock) and three time points (April, June and August 2018).
