ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – It's not a pleasant topic—testing stool samples when rumors of an outbreak hits the public consciousness, like the recent McDonald's E. coli outbreak. However, the New Mexico Department of Health Scientific Laboratories (NMDOHSL) were at the helm in early October when it came to figuring out if a national E. coli outbreak was festering in the state. Story continues below Investigation: Suspect terrorizing Nob Hill businesses off the streets, but for how long? Community: Does New Mexico have crows or ravens? Trending: Investigation underway after evidence of 10 to 20 human skulls found at southeastern New Mexico property News: New SNAP work requirements being implemented in New Mexico KRQE News 13 got a tour of the laboratories where scientists discovered the outbreak locally. The Scientific Laboratories were able to confirm an outbreak of E. coli was happening last month, and that it matched the strain causing the national outbreak. "It was just like a random Tuesday, I got ten plus samples in and then I started seeing positives off those. So, it kind of indicated to me that something might be going on," said Andrea Manzanares, microbiologist at the laboratories. NMDOHSL is the only public health lab for the state—tasked with all sorts of analysis, from DWI testing to infectious diseases. Last month, they saw a surge of E. coli samples coming in from local hospitals. "It sort of set off red flags with the staff who are working and characterizing those, so that was the first tip-off. It was before anything was known nationally," said Michael Edwards, director of NMDOHSL. In cases like these, hospitals identify the cases and send samples to these labs to further investigate. First, to microbiologists like Manzanares: "I start doing our initial workup, I'll plate it to various medias. So, each of these has different additives or sugars or inhibitors in here that will help us kind of weed out various bacteria." Manzanares said in this case, the strain of E. coli they were worried about would turn purple in the Petri dish. "So once I started doing my plating and my workups I saw that there was a whole bunch of purple, I kind of started to get a little suspicious," Manzanares said. From there, the samples were sent to the Molecular Biology laboratory to look even more closely at the DNA. "The sequencing is identifying all the alphabet soup of the genome," said Pascale Leonard, manager of the molecular biology section. Then, comparing those to sequences nationally and locally: "What we found is we did find a match for that 0157s that matched to the outbreak." With that information, the lab was able to determine this E. coli matched the pathogen that caused the national outbreak from the onions on the McDonald's Quarter Pounders. Another lab, the Environmental Microbiology lab, actually tested a Quarter Pounder from one subject who got sick. "It did end up being negative, and most probably because the patient had been ill when they ate the sandwich," said Nicole Espinoza, manager for the Environmental Microbiology lab. Espinoza says it takes four to eight days after you've eaten tainted food to actually get sick. "This was one of the hamburger samples, and there weren't any pink colonies on them," Espinoza said, showing a Petri dish. The lab said they see 50 outbreaks of various diseases a year; ten of which are national. The NMDOH said there have been ten confirmed cases of the E. coli outbreak in the state linked to the McDonald's Quarter Pounder.