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Analytical validity of nanopore sequencing for rapid SARS-CoV-2 genome analysis.

ABSTRACT: Viral whole-genome sequencing (WGS) provides critical insight into the transmission and evolution of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Long-read sequencing devices from Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) promise significant improvements in turnaround time, portability and cost, compared to established short-read sequencing platforms for viral WGS (e.g., Illumina). However, adoption of ONT sequencing for SARS-CoV-2 surveillance has been limited due to common concerns around sequencing accuracy. To address this, here we perform viral WGS with ONT and Illumina platforms on 157 matched SARS-CoV-2-positive patient specimens and synthetic RNA controls, enabling rigorous evaluation of analytical performance. We report that, despite the elevated error rates observed in ONT sequencing reads, highly accurate consensus-level sequence determination was achieved, with single nucleotide variants (SNVs) detected at >99% sensitivity and >99% precision above a minimum ~60-fold coverage depth, thereby ensuring suitability for SARS-CoV-2 genome analysis. ONT sequencing also identified a surprising diversity of structural variation within SARS-CoV-2 specimens that were supported by evidence from short-read sequencing on matched samples. However, ONT sequencing failed to accurately detect short indels and variants at low read-count frequencies. This systematic evaluation of analytical performance for SARS-CoV-2 WGS will facilitate widespread adoption of ONT sequencing within local, national and international COVID-19 public health initiatives.

SUBMITTER: Bull RA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7726558 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Analytical validity of nanopore sequencing for rapid SARS-CoV-2 genome analysis.

Bull Rowena A RA Adikari Thiruni N TN Ferguson James M JM Hammond Jillian M JM Stevanovski Igor I Beukers Alicia G AG Naing Zin Z Yeang Malinna M Verich Andrey A Gamaarachchi Hasindu H Kim Ki Wook KW Luciani Fabio F Stelzer-Braid Sacha S Eden John-Sebastian JS Rawlinson William D WD van Hal Sebastiaan J SJ Deveson Ira W IW

Nature communications 20201209 1

Viral whole-genome sequencing (WGS) provides critical insight into the transmission and evolution of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Long-read sequencing devices from Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) promise significant improvements in turnaround time, portability and cost, compared to established short-read sequencing platforms for viral WGS (e.g., Illumina). However, adoption of ONT sequencing for SARS-CoV-2 surveillance has been limited due to common concerns a ...[more]

PMID: 33298935

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Project description:A new human coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), emerged at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China that caused a range of disease severities; including fever, shortness of breath, and coughing. This disease, now known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), quickly spread throughout the world, and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March of 2020. As the disease continues to spread, providing rapid characterization has proven crucial to better inform the design and execution of control measures, such as decontamination methods, diagnostic tests, antiviral drugs, and prophylactic vaccines for long-term control. Our work at the United States Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center (DEVCOM CBC) is focused on engineering workflows to efficiently identify, characterize, and evaluate the threat level of any potential biological threat in the field and more remote, lower resource settings, such as forward operating bases. While we have successfully established untargeted sequencing approaches for detection of pathogens for rapid identification, our current work entails a more in-depth sequencing analysis for use in evolutionary monitoring. We are developing and validating a SARS-CoV-2 nanopore sequencing assay, based on the ARTIC protocol. The standard ARTIC, Illumina, and nanopore sequencing protocols for SARS-CoV-2 are elaborate and time consuming. The new protocol integrates Oxford Nanopore Technology's Rapid Sequencing Kit following targeted RT-PCR of RNA extracted from human clinical specimens. This approach decreases sample manipulations and preparation times. Our current bioinformatics pipeline utilizes Centrifuge as the classifier for quick identification of SARS-CoV-2 and RAMPART software for verification and mapping of reads to the full SARS-CoV-2 genome. ARTIC rapid sequencing results, of previous RT-PCR confirmed patient samples, showed that the modified protocol produces high quality data, with up to 98.9% genome coverage at >1,000x depth for samples with presumably higher viral loads. Furthermore, whole genome assembly and subsequent mutational analysis of six of these sequences identified existing and unique mutations to this cluster, including three in the Spike protein: V308L, P521R, and D614G. This work suggests that an accessible, portable, and relatively fast sample-to-sequence process to characterize viral outbreaks is feasible and effective.

Dataset Information

Analytical validity of nanopore sequencing for rapid SARS-CoV-2 genome analysis.

Publications

Analytical validity of nanopore sequencing for rapid SARS-CoV-2 genome analysis.

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