Narrator: This is Science Today. A consortium led by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, are looking into providing the earliest possible diagnosis of human infection – whether it’s a new or known disease or from a bioterrorist threat. Ken Turteltaub is leading the Lab’s Biodefense Division’s study of pathomics.

Turteltaub: Pathomics is the idea that we need to understand more about the underlying biology, the way that pathogens work and really use that to develop new methods to detect and measure pathogens in people and in animals.

Narrator: Currently, there’s an emphasis on bioterrorism – helping with fundamental science and applying that towards protecting the public against bioterrorist concerns.

Turteltaub: But there are major spin-offs from this – that we also want to help the rest of the scientific community to use and do some research ourselves on. And that is the overlay of the bioterrorism problem with just disease diagnosis, because it’s all relevant. The challenge is where we put our heads together.

Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.