At least two early-access users, at Massachusetts General Hospital and at Weill Cornell, have explored the new platform for infectious disease testing.
ARMADA began as a consortium of eight US organizations but has increased to 50 institutions in 20 countries and signed on actor Bill Pullman as a spokesman.
The scientists collected fecal samples from more than 9,000 pigs and chickens to find in excess of 400 antimicrobial resistance genes, which varied by country.
Collaborators said that the test is accurate and reliable for the rapid detection of the most common gram-positive bacteria responsible for bloodstream infections.
At ASM Microbe, the University of Wisconsin's Caitlin Pepperell described her work putting Mycobacterium tuberculosis genomics into a historical context.
Public health microbiologists are forging ahead with WGS, even as others caution that it may not yet be ready for such a role, said speakers at ASM Microbe 2018.
Though many details have yet to be worked out, the draft deal for the UK's withdrawal from the EU is giving researchers some hints for what they can expect, Nature News says.
DNA testing has solved a 100-year-old mystery contained in the skull and teeth samples of a now-extinct monkey that once inhabited Jamaica, Gizmodo reports.
As the UN ponders a ban on gene drives, one malaria researcher says there are less dramatic ways to fight the disease in Africa than unleashing GM mosquitoes on a whole continent.
