NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Sometimes it pays to chat with your seatmate on an airplane. When a concerned parent of a child with Lyme disease happened to be seated next to the Translational Genomics Research Institute's director of translational research, Daniel Van Hoff, on a recent flight, a discovered shared interest in improving diagnosis and treatment for the illness ultimately led to a projected half a million dollars in support for a new TGen sequencing-based test for Borrelia species and co-transmitted pathogens.