Full story in the Helena Independent Record
Excerpt: "Gov. Steve Bullock visited a Missoula diagnostics lab Tuesday to see how the company is developing a more cost-effective COVID-19 rapid test. FYR Diagnostics, a molecular diagnostics company, is in the time-consuming and expensive process of developing a new rapid test for COVID-19. The company was awarded $25,000 in grant funds from the Coronavirus Relief Fund for the project, and Bullock received a tour of its facilities and saw the rapid test running in real time. “As we’re all dealing with this global pandemic, you have some incredible companies here in Montana trying to figure out how we can do better, more effective testing,” Bullock said. “It’s really exciting to see what FYR’s doing, and any assistance that we can provide, of course, we will.” Before the coronavirus, the diagnostics company was focused primarily on agricultural and neurological diseases. The tests FYR is developing differ from the typical COVID-19 rapid tests being produced around the nation in one key way. The usual rapid tests are called RT-PCR tests, an acronym that stands for reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. These tests are thought of as the most sensitive, thus best at detection, in the country. FYR’s tests aim to use an equally-sensitive but alternative approach called isothermal amplification. Sarj Patel, president of FYR, and Chris Booth, CEO, explained the difference. In a nutshell, RT-PCRs have to cycle between temperatures to produce a result; isothermal tests do not. “RT-PCR (tests) are kind of like the gold standard for molecular diagnostics or virus pathogens in general,” Booth said. “But you can only change temperatures so quickly, even with very expensive machines. With isothermal, we are able to hold a single temperature and get a result in 30 minutes.” Booth said FYR’s tests are exactly on par with the typical RT-PCRs for sensitivity, and specifically tailored to detect COVID-19 as opposed to any amount of viral substance."
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I have unfortunately been lax regarding my upkeep of this site. Since the summer of 2016 I have presented on mortality at several more events and expos.
Additionally, I have begun TA-ing for the Invertebrate Zoology course taught here at the University of Idaho by my Major Professor, Dr. Christine Parent. This experience has provided great opportunities for both guest lecturing and development of lab plans. Back in September we took the class out to the McCall outdoor science school in McCall Idaho to sample inverts and measure biodiversity. It was a great weekend and I look forward to seeing how this semester will wrap up! Attended the EEID conference in Ithaca at the beginning of the month to present my poster on the effects of DCV And DXV on host mortality. Great presentations and a massive poster session. Just returned from a summer course on Machine Learning Methods for Gene Expression Data at UT Austin. The course was a bit heavier on the seminar side than I was expecting, but I left with a much better understanding of machine learning and plenty of home brew code for both R and Python from Dennis Wylie that needs sifting through here on my own time.
On a side note, Austin is a beautiful city full of amiable folks. I highly recommend a visit! |
John KaiserJust info and musings about upcoming events and travel. Archives
September 2020
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