Nature Communications · 17 October 2026 · From issue 53
Developing and benchmarking one health genomic surveillance tools for influenza A virus in wastewater
A custom probe tool found bird flu and human flu genes in real sewage samples.
Minxi Jiang, Audrey L. W. Wang et al.
Flu virus is hard to spot in sewage because there is so little of its genetic material to find. Scientists built and tested four methods to pull out and read flu genes from wastewater. A custom tool focused on one flu gene worked fast and cheap for known flu types. A different custom tool using sticky gene-catching probes could pick up signals from several flu types, including bird flu, even in damaged samples.
Shows method performance in real wastewater samples, not a claim about outbreak tracking in communities yet.
Lab method testing only, not yet used for routine public health tracking.
Integrity screen: passed (3 checks) Checked 18 October 2026. Retraction record: none. DOI resolves at doi.org. Metadata record found (Nature Communications). Read the source
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