MicrobeNet, a Tool for Study, Diagnosis of Rare Pathogens

In this video, you can get a look at MicrobeNet, a tool developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to help researchers and clinicians in the identification and diagnosis of unusual pathogens. It's an online resource that requires an account to get into, but this video gives you a sense of what there is on offer.

Sometimes people get sick with something that is confounding diagnosis and confusing doctors, and all the while the well-being of the patient is on the line. And yet, there is no easy way to diagnose them even with all of the tools now available. This resource is one way to help fill that gap. Identifying what is making a patient sick can then help find the best treatment course.

Doctors and researchers will be able to use the MicrobeNet site to browse the pathogen directory maintained by the CDC. This website contains information on over 2,400 rare pathogens, including many characteristics about them like images and genetic data. The database is also searchable in a variety of ways, and allows for a multitude of queries, including a 16s RNA sequence search.

At the end of the video, you find out how to request an account for the site so you can perform your own searches.