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Mantis Biodefense Corporation
Mantis is America’s first modern defense company focused on detection of infectious disease outbreak. We serve both civilian and military applications.
Monocle: a monitoring system for environmental pathogenic DNA
Mantis is developing Monocle, a vertically-integrated, industrialized product for sequencing and tracking pathogenic DNA present in wastewater. Wastewater includes sewage, runoff, rivers, manure, and leachate. Infected humans and animals naturally shed pathogenic DNA into wastewater, which can then be detected using metagenomic sequencing. We aim to standardize, automate, and cost-reduce metagenomic sequencing techniques as much as possible.
Monocle is made up of two parts:
01
Mechanical systems for automatic collection of wastewater samples; intuitive app-based SOPs for technicians that minimize the need for training; digital tracking of samples; automatic inventory and supply management; robotic systems for hands-free sample prep and sequencing at a cost of $20,000-$30,000 USD.
02
Automatic management, transfer, backup, and archival of petabytes of sequences in the cloud or in colocated distributed systems; automatic detection of pathogens; automatic cross-referencing of sequences against historical data and sister stations; automatic escalations of potential outbreaks using machine learning; communication GUIs between labs and outposts.
Advantages of Monocle
01
Genome-level tracking allows for detection of unanticipated threats, including novel pathogens that have never been identified by the current body of scientific knowledge. If any arbitrary sequence of DNA is rapidly increasing in frequency and appearing in multiple geographic locations, it is sufficient to discern an outbreak.
02
Watersheds tend to drain and collect at a singular point, allowing sequencing at this point to cover a large sampling of humans or animals.
03
Aggregation from multiple inputs anonymizes the source of DNA, protecting individuals’ health privacy rights and obviating the hefty regulations that come with them.
04
Monocle makes wastewater metagenomic sequencing easy and eliminates the confusion, delays, and discrepancy that come with ad hoc lab techniques, including data management and sharing.
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Monocle applications: military
National security
Protect against bioterrorist threats and natural disease outbreaks which threaten servicemembers and the country as a whole.
Abroad
Detect emerging global pandemics from wastewater of servicemembers stationed abroad.
Hospitals
Improve the performance of military hospitals with data-driven insights and monitor the development of antibiotic resistance therein.
Combat readiness
Improve productivity and preventative care in the Armed Forces by quarantining against local cold and flu outbreaks, which double as drills against a more virulent threat.
Domestic service
Partner with the National Guard and state governments to improve domestic logistical responses against pandemics.
Monocle applications: agriculture
Animal disease
Protect against the spread of avian flu, swine flu, and bovine diseases among neighboring animal farms with advance notice. The H5N1 bird flu outbreak from 2021-2022 has resulted in the culling of 77 million poultry worldwide.
Plant disease
Protect against the spread of pests and infection in crops between neighboring fields with advance notice.
Invasive species
Detect the spread and import of invasive species and infectious agricultural diseases in airports, ports, and local ecology, which threaten the domestic agriculture industry as a whole.
Climate change
Defend against the rise of equatorial invasive fungi and insects in crop fields whose prevalence will increase in temperate latitudes due to climate change.
Introducing the OHANA Net: An open-source Internet protocol for outbreak detection
Orbital imaging satellites are foundational to our daily lives. We use them to monitor fires, hurricanes, climate change, terrorism, agriculture, and supply chains around the world. But who is tracking the 9 x 10^36 bytes of DNA that flow on Earth?
Preventing the next global pandemic will require a constellation of “DNA satellites” to blanket the globe: essentially, a network of Monocle systems and analogues as provided by nonprofits, corporations, universities, local municipalities, state and national governments, defense departments, foundations, international organizations, and grassroots bodies. Variegated collaboration, especially across international borders, is crucial for human welfare against future pandemics.
There needs to be an open Internet protocol, like HTTP, for software-driven escalation and cross-referencing of DNA sequences from metagenomic sequencing that are rapidly increasing in frequency or pose a threat to humanity. We name this protocol the OHANA Net.
The OHANA Net would help ensure that early detection of pandemics is rapid, collaborative, self-organizing, and resilient. Any biology lab around the world would be able to participate as a node of the OHANA Net, and nodes would be free to communicate with any other node that accepts them. The OHANA Net would ensure detection of the next global pandemic covers remote parts of the world and places that lack infrastructure or are currently undergoing state disaster or civil unrest. The OHANA Net would ensure that global response to the next pandemic will be faster and more focused than the response to COVID-19.
At Mantis, we aim to consult with top experts in epidemiology, international relations, and computer science, and collaborate with other institutions to develop and deploy the OHANA Net, for our clients and for humanity at large.
The OHANA Net is inspired by the Nucleic Acid Observatory concept and organization.
