Statewide multi-year wastewater sequencing reveals dual origins of HIV-1 signal
Justin R. Clark, Dylan Chirman, Harihara Prakash, Austen Terwilliger, Marlene McNeese, Matt Ross, Mike Tisza, Sara J. Javornik Cregeen, Loren Hopkins, Jennifer Deegan, Catherine L. Troisi, Eric Boerwinkle, Kristina Mena, Fuqing Wu, Jason T. Kimata, Marc Johnson, Devon Gregory, Faith E. Fletcher, Thomas P. Giordano, Anthony W. Maresso · 2026
Read Statewide multi-year wastewater sequencing reveals dual origins of HIV-1 signal by Justin R. Clark, Dylan Chirman, Harihara Prakash, Austen Terwilliger, Marlene McNeese, Matt Ross, Mike Tisza, Sara J. Javornik Cregeen, Loren Hopkins, Jennifer Deegan, Catherine L. Troisi, Eric Boerwinkle, Kristina Mena, Fuqing Wu, Jason T. Kimata, Marc Johnson, Devon Gregory, Faith E. Fletcher, Thomas P. Giordano, Anthony W. Maresso (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13408598.txt.
Description
Justin Clark and colleagues spent nearly three years reading HIV genetic material from city wastewater in 2026, across fifteen cities. Sewage monitoring can reveal infections that clinical testing misses, yet HIV is a hard target because people may shed it long before symptoms. A hybrid-capture sequencing method pulled near-complete viral genomes from the flow.
Mixed into the catch was a surprise: many sequences came not from circulating virus but from laboratory retroviral vectors used in research. The team built a mapping method that separates genuine HIV regions from vector look-alikes. Once cleaned, the wastewater signal tracked diagnosed HIV prevalence in communities where clinical figures existed. Public health readers get both a caution about contamination and early evidence that sewage could gauge community HIV burden.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Justin R. Clark, Dylan Chirman, Harihara Prakash, Austen Terwilliger, Marlene McNeese, Matt Ross, Mike Tisza, Sara J. Javornik Cregeen, Loren Hopkins, Jennifer Deegan, Catherine L. Troisi, Eric Boerwinkle, Kristina Mena, Fuqing Wu, Jason T. Kimata, Marc Johnson, Devon Gregory, Faith E. Fletcher, Thomas P. Giordano, Anthony W. Maresso |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 102102 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |