“I have to use my knowledge and expertise and go back to the lab and try to really help.”
That’s a quote from Zharko Daniloski, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Sanjana Lab and one of several scientists at the New York Genome Center (NYGC) profiled in Meet the New Yorkers Hunting Down Coronavirus Variants, published in Gothamist on March 25. Gothamist reporter Sydney Pereira visited the NYGC earlier in the month, shadowing the NYGC teams that have been on-site since the onset of the pandemic, pivoting their research and sequencing activities to focus on the coronavirus and its emerging variants. Also profiled in the article are Dina Manaa, Manager, Sequencing Operations Lab, and Robert Furatero and Atit Raval, both Associate Scientists in the Sequencing Operations Lab.
Gothamist’s visit to the NYGC is also featured in the March 31 follow-up article How Coronavirus Variants Are Tracked: A Tour Inside NYC’s Genome Labs. The NYGC is among the lab toured, particularly focused on under the section entitled “Enter the sequencer.” Soren Germer, PhD, Senior Vice President, Genome Technologies, and Melissa Marton, Associate Director, Production Lab, provide commentary on the importance of viral sequencing surveillance in combating the pandemic. In his Gothamist profile, NYGC “tracker” Atit Raval notes the insights from such work: “We’re hearing all these things about COVID, but it’s the little details about how the virus originates, how it infects [the] body, how it multiplies in the body.”
