Our work on detecting cryptic SARS-CoV-2 variants in NYC wastewater has been published in Nature Communciations. Emily Anthes of the NY Times wrote a great article abou the work. Last January, a team of researchers searching for the coronavirus in New York City’s wastewater spotted something strange in their samples. The viral fragments they found had a unique constellation of …
Omicron was probably in N.Y.C. well before the first U.S. case was detected, wastewater data suggest. The samples suggest that someone in New York City may have had the Omicron variant as early as Nov. 21, four days before South African scientists first announced cases of the variant and ten days before the first U.S. case was reported. Researchers in California and …
The Lab has submitted a pair of preprints. In the first, we describe our protocol for quantifying SARS-CoV-2 in NYC wastewater. In the second, we used this protocol to sequence SARS-CoV-2 isolated from NYC wastewater. In our targeted sequencing assay, we find a high frequency of mutations associated with circulating Variants of Concern. Protocol for Safe, Affordable, and Reproducible Isolation …
Irene submitted a pre-print describing her analysis of rotavirus A evolution over the past 60 years. Interestingly segments have unique evolutionary histories and RVA genetic diversity declined following the introduction of the rotavirus vaccine. Rotavirus A Genome Segments Show Distinct Segregation and Codon Usage Patterns
Dr. Dennehy gave a talk about the future of the COVID-19 Pandemic. A recording is available on YouTube: At Home with Queens College Presents: What Does SARS-CoV-2 Evolution Mean for the Future of the Pandemic?
Manuscript Published: Reproducibility and sensitivity of 36 methods to quantify the SARS-CoV-2 genetic signal in raw wastewater: findings from an interlaboratory methods evaluation in the U.S. The Dennehy Lab participated in a nationwide consortial project comparing the best protocols for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater. Our pasteurize, filter, PEG concentrate protocol was among the best performing methods for quantifying SARS-CoV-2 concentrations …
The Dennehy Lab receives funding from NIH for proposal “Novel Strategies for Treating Biofilm-Forming Pathogens with Phage Therapy” This project is a collaboration with Dr. Fabrizio Spagnolo. The aim of the proposed work is to assess the viability of a multi-pronged phage therapy approach to eliminate biofilm-associated bacteria. Specifically, we propose to induce prophages already contained within biofilm-associated bacteria to …
The Dennehy Laboratory receives funding from NSF for proposal titled “Metapopulation Modeling to Develop Strategies to Reduce COVID-19 Transmission in Public Spaces” A recently developed computational model (the Ephemeral Island Metapopulation Model (EIMM) that applies metapopulation theory to explain how pathogens persist in hospital environments will be revised to address the spatial spread of SARS-CoV-2 within built environments. An enveloped …
Dr. Sherin Kannoly’s manuscript is published in iScience In this manuscript, we show that noise in the timing of a cellular event, host cell lysis, follows a concave up curve. This finding suggests that lysis timing has an optimum value that minimizes noise. As such, lysis timing noise may be a target of natural selection. The manuscript is available here.