Researchers in the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and their
colleagues in the WHO Global Laboratory Network have developed a
new tool for pathogen surveillance and discovery—the GreeneChip
System. The GreeneChip is the first tool to provide
comprehensive, differential diagnosis of infectious diseases,
including those caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi, or
parasites. In addition, it is the first tool that can be used on
a wide variety of samples, including tissue, blood, urine, and
stool, allowing for the rapid identification of pathogens in a
variety of laboratory and clinical settings. The GreeneChip
system and its application in an outbreak investigation when
other methods failed to implicate a microorganism in a fatal
hemorrhagic fever case is described in the January 2007 issue of
the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases (online December 6 at
www.cdc.gov/EID/13/1/06-0837.htm). Globalization of travel and
trade brings new infectious agents into new