Insights from 17 years of culture and PCR detection of animal mollicutes in a Canadian provincial laboratory
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Since ~1980, the Animal Health Laboratory (AHL) in Ontario, Canada, has isolated animal mollicute species by culture. Data for the most recent 17 y (2007–2024) captures over 90,000 test results. Advancements in PCR, qPCR, and DNA sequencing have shifted the percentage of testing by PCR from 18.7% in 2007 to 91.1% in 2024. The bulk of this shift is due to the uptake of molecular testing as a screening tool for clinically normal animals, but this shift has not been universal, particularly for ureaplasma testing. Culture remains the gold standard for the detection and identification of rare pathogens and plays a key role in research through our mycoplasma cryobank, which includes 40+ y of isolates. Synergizing the microbiologic and molecular techniques developed over the AHL’s multi-decade history has presented novel opportunities for detection, characterization, and local eradication of animal mollicutes, including the development of new assays, tracking of historical trends for antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and identifying AMR-associated mutations in Mycoplasmopsis ( Mycoplasma ) bovis .
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".