Merging Microfludics and Metagenomics for Novel High - throughout Virus Discovery

描述(申请人提供)：病毒感染对国内和全世界的公共卫生都有重大影响。因此，对已知的人类病毒病原体的研究投入了巨大的努力。然而，许多病因不明的疾病很可能是由病毒引起的。此外，新的病毒病原体也在不断出现。检测和识别新型人类病毒的能力是理解和治愈与这些病原体相关的疾病的主要障碍。我们开发了一种合作方法，将病毒元基因组学的力量与微流控技术的进步相结合，从而能够从复杂的生物样本中检测和分离单个病毒。在这里，元基因组学是对大量未知病毒的研究，而微流体学是应用微米级的液滴以非常高的吞吐量分离和检测单个病毒。这项申请寻求支持，以扩大该系统检测到的病毒类型，并将其应用于分离和初步鉴定两种可能感染人类的新型病毒。该平台的开发将极大地提高检测、分离和快速鉴定新病原体的能力。微流控平台的发展将为迄今尚未识别的病毒的鉴定和研究提供新兴技术。这项研究将是首次尝试将这项技术应用于识别重要的新类别 病毒。这项工作代表了两种方法的新组合，以推进对人类健康具有重大影响的新病毒的发现过程。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Viral infections have a major impact on public health both domestically and worldwide. Consequently intense effort has been placed on the study of known human viral pathogens. However, it is likely that many diseases of unknown etiology are caused by viruses. Furthermore, new viral pathogens are constantly emerging. The ability to detect and identify novel human viruses is a major roadblock to understanding and curing diseases associated with these agents. We have developed a collaborative approach that combines the power of viral metagenomics with advances in microfluidics to allow the detection and isolation of individual viruses from complex biological samples. Here, metagenomics is the study of large populations of unknown viruses, while microfluidics is the application of micron size drops to isolate and assay single viruses at very high throughput. This application seeks support to broaden the types of viruses detected by this system and to apply it to the isolation and preliminary characterization of two novel viruses that potentially infect humans. The development of this platform will greatly enhance the ability to detect, isolate and thus rapidly characterize novel pathogens. The development of the microfluidics platform will provide emerging technology to the identification and study of heretofore unidentified viruses. This study will be the first effort to apply this technology to the identification of important new classes of viruses. This work represents a novel combination of two methods to advance the discovery process of new viruses that have a major impact on human health.