Yale School of Public Health: Scientists Show How Rapid Sequencing Could Transform TB Care

25 February 2026

Yale School of Public Health news story

When the COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak, and multiple variants were threatening lives around the world, scientists relied on a process called ‘tiled amplicon sequencing’ to track the virus’s spread.

Now, an international team of scientists is applying those same techniques to more rapidly sequence TB.

In a new study appearing in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, researchers report that they successfully adapted the tiled amplicon sequencing method to accurately read the genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis without needing to culture the bacteria first. This procedure is attractive to scientists and clinicians because it reduces the time it takes to scan TB samples from weeks to days and lowers testing costs from hundreds of dollars per sample to less than $20.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is often found at low concentrations and is notoriously slow to grow. Researchers typically analyze TB samples by collecting patient sputum and then incubating the sample in the lab for up to six weeks until there are enough bacteria to sequence. Although this approach can identify drug-resistant TB, the long delays between sample collection and genome analysis make it less likely that clinicians can use the genetic data to guide patient treatment.

Read the full news story here.

 

Source: Yale School of Public Health