Details

This webinar will discuss the benefits of virus-specific target capture combined with next-generation sequencing (NGS) to identify viral infections and conduct comprehensive genomic and transcriptomic interrogation.

The high diversity of inter-virus genome types and intra-virus genomic heterogeneity, together with the complexity of sample types, make NGS-based clinical virology difficult, arduous, and expensive. A single method that is able to use nucleic acids that are of low quantity and poor quality to examine both DNA and RNA viruses from a mixed cell population that may include human, bacteria, and viruses would be ideal.   

To this end, our speaker, Darrell L. Dinwiddie of the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, will discuss a method his team has been evaluating that uses virus-specific target capture probe sets coupled with NGS.

Dr. Dinwiddie will discuss how this method has demonstrated significant improvement in respiratory viral identification and genome coverage compared to unenriched NGS. His team has shown the ability to effectively capture and sequence viruses that may differ from the probes by as much as 10 percent to 15 percent. These methods have worked for viral sequencing from purified viral stocks, in vitro cell culture, and clinical samples.

This webinar will also address the broader implications of this work, including surveillance, epidemiologic studies, and public health planning.

For example, in two hospital outbreak studies, Dr. Dinwiddie and colleagues have shown that target capture and NGS enabled sensitive discrimination of the relatedness of respiratory syncytial virus and human parainfluenza virus 3 isolates obtained during the outbreak and provided evidence for source of transmission.

In addition, through multi-year retrospective and prospective NGS studies of respiratory viral infections at multiple pediatric hospitals, Dr. Dinwiddie and his team have been able to examine seasonal respiratory virus genomic variation, evolution, and distribution for several respiratory viruses. This includes evaluating the match of vaccine to circulating influenza virus strains and the correlation between virus strains and clinical severity of infections.  The recently developed Human Pan Viral sequencing methods by Illumina and Twist Biosciences will enable similar studies not only for respiratory viruses, but for all types of human viral pathogens across all sample types of interest. 

Darrell L. Dinwiddie, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics
Scholar, Clinical Translational Science Center
University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

Date & Time
1 May 2019
10:00 AM
Location
North America
Affiliation
University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
Presenter
Darrell L. Dinwiddie
Topic
Microbial Genomics
Watch Now