Eric TopolIf you'd have told me 2 or 3 years ago that a real-time wastewater surveillance algorithm would become the primary way to detect Covid on the rise, I wouldn't have believed it. But it is now:
Michael Porter@erictopol @lisamelton Cool thing I learned about wastewater surveillance - There is a virus, pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV), present in peppers that are used for hot sauces, etc.
According to Wikipedia, it “is consistently found in wastewater from around the world at concentrations greater than 1 million copies per milliliter of raw sewage” and so makes for a good water quality indicator (as it comes almost exclusively from human feces, is stable, and detection is straightforward) as well as a tool to normalize SARS-CoV-2 concentrations for wastewater tracking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_mild_mottle_virus
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-018-0019-5
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35864362/
Mya Breitbart@lisamelton @MichaelPorter @erictopol My lab worked for years developing PMMoV as an indicator of fecal pollution but I never imagined it as a standard for wastewater surveillance - love to see it gaining more traction (and eek, just realized our first PMMoV paper was published 17 years ago, I’m old!)
Rachel Poretsky@virome_girl @lisamelton @MichaelPorter @erictopol I LOVE that I learned about pmmov from you about 10 years ago and now use it all the time! Is it weird that I think of you when we work with 💩 in the lab?
@MichaelPorter @microbe @lisamelton @erictopol I’m honored that you think of me when you work with 💩 🤎