Orchid M. Allicock

This study evaluates the storage stability of non-encapsulated pneumococci in saliva, finding that NCC2 strains are less stable than NCC1, and that extraction-free methods may better detect NCC2 strains.

The paper develops a novel multiplex qPCR assay to detect and classify non-encapsulated pneumococci (NESp) by targeting aliC and aliD genes, showing high specificity and prevalence in saliva samples.

This paper develops tiled amplicon sequencing panels for whole-genome sequencing of pathogenic bacteria without culturing, enabling drug resistance classification from clinical samples.