Friend or Foe

The Friend or Foe (FoF) program will develop the capability to rapidly identify potential bacterial pathogens in complex environments through analysis of their behavior (i.e., their phenotype). New pathogens, both naturally occurring and adversary-engineered, are increasingly likely to emerge due to changes in the environment, rising global population, and the wide availability of genetic engineering tools to both state and non-state actors. These factors, coupled with faster potential dispersal due to increasing global travel and population density, have significantly increased the danger posed by bacterial pathogens. Current detection strategies based on biochemical markers would not work on previously undiscovered bacteria or on bacteria designed to evade detection. Moreover, genetic sequencing and omics analyses are insufficient to address this growing challenge, since the phenotype of a pathogen might not be determinable from the genetic make-up (i.e., the genotype) alone. The novel capability developed under FoF will provide detailed, high-throughput phenotype-based characterization of unknown bacteria through identification of pathogenic traits. Specifically, the technology should reliably extract representative samples of bacteria from complex environments, maintain their viability while they are repeatedly interrogated to identify virulence factors, and then analyze them using an omics approach that leverages external pathogen and gene databases. Ultimately, this technology will detect bacterial pathogens as, or even before, they emerge as a threat to the public.