Dr. Andrew Huff

But we try to figure out who these people are.

And then if they're capable, oftentimes it's universities.

Right.

Either the ag school or at a foreign university, the veterinary school or human medical center.

Then we formulate the contract, we send them the cash, and then they would either go out and collect the samples or we would travel or have our personnel travel to go collect the samples.

If we're talking about bats, it depends what species you're dealing with.

Right.

If you're dealing with bats, you set nets or traps in a bat cave, for example.

You catch the bat in the net and then you go out there in your personal protective equipment and you take...

uh fecal swabs um blood saliva from the animal and then you then package that so the the dna will not be degrade and transport back to the laboratory and then depending where's the laboratory well depends on what country you're working in so every country had we had different agreements with contractually about who owned the samples who would store the samples

And the other thing that's happening in the background here is that technology is advancing.

So at one time in this type of research, you actually had to have the physical sample.

Today, we're at a point, you no longer have to have the physical sample.

You can actually send the DNA or RNA code digitally to somebody else and they can recreate it.

So this field has advanced tremendously over 10 years.

And this is taking place as advancement while we're doing this work.

Oftentimes the samples then were physically transported back to the United States or mailed or shipped.

Well, there's a manual from the CDC and USDA and HHS of how to transport samples.

So yes, there are rules and process of how you can.

Typically, and there's really not a whole lot of risk from a collected sample.