One Health Genomics

Summary: Whole genome sequencing (WGS) has played an increasingly important role in public health, veterinary medicine, and environmental microbiology. WGS provides high resolution data that can be used to understand the relatedness between human, animal and environmental samples - a critical part of outbreak investigations. Here we discuss how WGS is an effective tool in the investigation of animal outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A H5N1 in British Columbia. Presenters: Dr. Agatha Jassem, PhD, D(ABMM), FCCM, is a Clinical Microbiologist and the Program Head of the Virology Lab at the BC Centre for Disease Control Public Health Laboratory. She is also a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Jassem oversees diagnostic testing and her research focuses on evaluating new strategies for detecting and charactering viruses and viral exposures. Dr. Natalie Prystajecky works as a microbiologist at the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory (PHL), where she oversees two laboratories: Environmental Microbiology and the Molecular and Microbial Genomics. Dr. Prystajecky is also a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. In her clinical roles and research endeavours, she uses emerging technologies such as genomics to improve routine surveillance and outbreak investigations, including for SARS-CoV-2.

BC CDC Presenters

6/21/2022 7:00:00 PM