Simon from the Nucleic Acid Observatory here. Thanks for writing this up, exciting to have more people thinking about this.
For your proposal, can you say more about:
i) how would you envision getting access to these samples? Airport wastewater is great, but getting permits can be tricky.
ii) what would a pilot project of your proposal look like? I.e., what kind of sequencing would you do, where would you do the sequencing, who would do processing?
For your NovaSeq X numbers, one thing worth noting: You can normally only buy a full 25B flow cell, not just a ~1.5B lane. The Broad offers this, but I’m unsure how common that offer is. I assume it’s reate. Now, you might be fine with a smaller sequencer anyway, as airplane wastewater has higher relative abundance. But this kind of stuff is pretty important for unit economics: to fill a full Novaseq X flow cell you’d need several samples, which can be tricky, especially when just starting a new program.
Simon from the Nucleic Acid Observatory here. Thanks for writing this up, exciting to have more people thinking about this.
For your proposal, can you say more about:
i) how would you envision getting access to these samples? Airport wastewater is great, but getting permits can be tricky.
ii) what would a pilot project of your proposal look like? I.e., what kind of sequencing would you do, where would you do the sequencing, who would do processing?
For your NovaSeq X numbers, one thing worth noting: You can normally only buy a full 25B flow cell, not just a ~1.5B lane. The Broad offers this, but I’m unsure how common that offer is. I assume it’s reate. Now, you might be fine with a smaller sequencer anyway, as airplane wastewater has higher relative abundance. But this kind of stuff is pretty important for unit economics: to fill a full Novaseq X flow cell you’d need several samples, which can be tricky, especially when just starting a new program.