I should clarify one thought that I wrote in my previous message, "It might be much easier to do in-vitro lab work on certain pathogens, probably bacteria. And it would probably be wise to initially choose non-pathogenic bacteria, species that don't have a lot of variance (which would for instance rule out E. coli)."

There is a strain of non-pathogenic Escherichia coli available, so that might work for lab testing if proper lab procedures are used which avoid contamination from other pathogenic E. coli strains.

Charlene Boehm