An innovative biological detection technology developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been getting quite a work out. Lab biologist Crystal Jaing says the Microbial Detection Array has been used in more than two dozen collaborations for a variety of applications, including testing vaccine safety, food safety, linking viruses to bladder cancer and there’s more to come.

"So, we are starting to use this technology to look at emerging pathogens because very often if there’s a new outbreak for a virus or a bacteria, some of the public health laboratories may not have a test already available for that pathogen. So, this is where this technology can really come in because we can analyze any of the known or any of the sequence pathogens and also to look at those emerging pathogens currently now circulating in the United States to really help predict an outbreak early."