Detecting airborne pathogens by DNA sequencing

Matt Clark says that sampling biological material from the air was initially ‘a wacky idea’ that he had while working at the Earlham Institute (EI) in Norwich, UK. Clark, now at the Natural History Museum in London has spent the past 12 years refining the idea, along with Richard Leggett at the EI. They are now launching a portable air sampling technology called AirSeq as part of a joint spin-out, Agnos Biosciences.