"The new diagnostic tool provides speed, accuracy, and sensitivity we simply didn't have before,"

A major weapon in the fight against whirling disease--a trout- killing infection that is devastating in some wild trout populations--has been developed by researchers at the University of California-Davis, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Whirling Disease Foundation
Andree and Hedrick isolated genes from Myxobolus cerebralis (the parasite causing whirling disease), allowing the use of a modern diagnostic test known as the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).