Development of a Quantitative TaqMan(TRADE MARK): PCR Assay and Feasibility of Atmospheric Collection for Coccidioides immitis for Ecological Studies

摘要

In this study, the unique capabilities in biotechnology and environmental science available at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are combined with the distinguished and highly regarded expertise for clinically investigating and treating infectious disease at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine of the University of California, Davis, in order to develop, standardize, validate, and test safely the feasibility of applying advanced polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology and new air-sample collection media that would be appropriate for addressing comprehensively the environmentally linked, medically important infectious disease Valley Fever (coccidioidomycosis). The responsible agent for this disease is the airborne spore (arthroconidia) of the pathogenic fungus Coccidioides immitis, which is a microorganism that is endemic to California, Arizona, and the southwestern United States, and also is identified as a select (biological) agent in the federal Anti-Terrorist und Effective Death Penalty Act. Successful demonstration of these tools in this study will place this multidisciplinary team in a credible position to proceed with additional research designed to determine the climatic signals and ecological triggers that would be associated with the presence of this microorganism environmentally and that would correlate with subsequent outbreaks of Valley Fever clinically. Results from such future research would then provide the information needed for environmental intervention of the disease occurrence, well before clinical cases appear. The technology and modeling developed for such a study also could be used for determining the ecology of other environmentally linked, medically important infectious diseases that occur naturally or that might be introduced deliberately into environmental media indoors or outside.