Metagenomic Deep Sequencing in Meningitis and Encephalitis. Homo sapiens

This is a prospective observational study seeking to identify pathogens in cases of unexplained neurological disease, particularly those in which there is a presumed infectious cause. This next generation analytical approach will hopefully allow for rapid identification of foreign genomic material, and through a sophisticated bioinformatics pipeline developed in the DeRisi lab, these foreign genomic sequences can be aligned to all known sequences in publicly available databases (i.e. GenBank) which may allow for identification of novel pathogens or known pathogens that are not frequently tested for as part of standard diagnostic work-ups.