Managing Harmful Organisms
When harmful organisms threaten public health, the environment, or industrial operations, determining organism identity and relative abundance comprise the first vital steps in managing the threat. Bio-threats can strike with little warning, quickly grow to catastrophic levels, and trigger widespread secondary effects.
Saigene's platform has about a 60-minute turnaround time between introducing a prepared sample and reading the final result. It identifies target organisms and reports relative abundance. Our sandwich hybridization assays (SHA) have relatively high tolerance to constituents in complex natural samples that can inhibit other analytical methods.
Saigene's flexible platform enables very rapid, low-cost analyses and requires relatively little operator training and skill. It offers the potential for highly cost-effective bio-threat detection and characterization. It also offers the ability to help assess and monitor effectiveness of active intervention.
Massive toxic cyanobacterial bloom in Lake Erie, October 2011. It caused Toledo's public water officials to warn citizens not to drink or boil city water. Such blooms recur annually with differing intensity. 2015 saw a new record.
Oceanic red tide. These generate toxins that can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) and other neurotoxic pathologies. PSP has grown rapidly in global incidence over the last decade.
Hydraulic fracturing ("fracing") in a shale oil well. Frac completion uses several million gallons of water obtained from surface streams and bodies of water. These sources naturally contain high levels of potentially harmful bacteria in their sediments. Research suggests that such harmful surface-habitat bacteria enter new wells during drilling and completion, leading to very high costs over the life of the well.
Pitting corrosion in oilfield steel tubing caused by microbiological action that consumes iron at a rapid rate. Catastrophic equipment damage, including pipeline leaks, can happen quickly and create very high costs in the oil and gas industry.