Six months after being discharged from the Ebola treatment, a male survivor of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) transmitted the virus to his female partner, who died of the disease. The survivor’s semen had tested negative by conventional means, but the authors were able to enrich semen the sample for EBOV RNA with the Illumina TruSeq RNA Access kit and custom probes. The authors compared viral RNA sequences from blood samples from the victim as well as the survivor’s older brother and former wife. All the sequenced genomes shared specific substitutions that were absent from all other Western African EBOV sequences. This result is consistent sexual transmission between the survivor and his partner. For more information on applications of Illumina technology in the field of RNA, please visit us at Illumina: RNA sequencing http://www.illumina.com/applications/sequencing/rna.ilmn Products: MiSeq: http://www.illumina.com/systems/miseq.html TruSeq RNA Access kit: http://www.illumina.com/systems/hiseq_2500_1500.html Publication Links: PMID: 26465384 | Mate SE., et al. (2015): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Molecular+Evidence+of+Sexual+Transmission+of+Ebola+Virus Publication Research Reviews: Virus Detection and Research: http://www.illumina.com/documents/products/research_reviews/viral_detection_research_review.pdf The Science Mondays (SciMon) series is brought to you by Illumina http://www.illumina.com/ Illumina hosts Irene Predazzi, Ph.D., Sr Scientific Liaison, Scientific Affairs and Jacques Retief, Associate Director Scientific Affairs deliver 5 minutes of scientific enlightenment on the latest discoveries.