Combating an invisible enemy (SARS-CoV-2) using genome sequencing
The COVID-19 is a highly transmittable and pathogenic viral infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which emerged in Wuhan, China and spread around the world. Eurofins Genomics India has accomplish many, full length SARS-Cov-2 Genome Sequencing in various samples such as human, wastewater and animals. Few of the interesting insights our patron, have published are discussed in this article.
CDC launched the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) in September 2020. CDC developed NWSS to build a new public health tool to understand COVID-19's spread in a community through Wastewater Surveillance. This might provide an early warning of COVID-19’s spread in communities.
Wastewater-Based Surveillance as a Sustainable and Pragmatic Approach—A Case Study of Jaipur (India) published by Aditi Nag et al. 2022. In this study, it was observed to have B.1.617.2 in early March, which is correlating well with the clinical patient’s data (290 cases were reported much later by the government on 10 May 2021). This study helps us to identify that sewage surveillance for variant characterization is a reliable and practical method for tracking the diversity of SARS-CoV-2 strains in the community that is considerably faster than clinical genomic surveillance. This method can predict the epidemiologically or clinically important mutations/variants at a initial stage, which can help in public health decision making. Wastewater-based surveillance is developing as an efficient and advantageous tool to predict COVID-19 prevalence in the population. For more details: https://doi.org/10.3390/w14030297
This pandemic has highlighted the significance of emerging diseases of zoonotic importance. It was observed that with human beings, several other species of wild and pet animals have been infected by SARS-CoV-2. The constant emergence of new variants, the species susceptibility may change which needs intensified screening efforts. In this study “https://doi.org/10.1111/tbed.14290”, it was observed that Asiatic lions were infected with SARS-CoV-2 infection Karikalan et al. 2021. The genomic characterization carried out, revealed involvement of Delta mutant (Pango lineage B.1.617.2) of SARS-CoV-2 at two different locations. Similar, study from the same group Mahajan et al 2022, was carried out on Indian Leopard (Panthera pardus fusca) which was also infected with SARS-CoV-2 naturally. Whole genome sequencing revealed to have delta variant of SARS-Cov-2, possibility infected through a human. This infection was found when the SARS-CoV-2 cases in human population were dropped significantly https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.11.475327. The epidemiological and molecular analysis will contribute to the understanding of the emerging mutants of SARS-CoV-2 in wild and domestic animals.
Genome sequencing facilitates the world to quickly identify SARS-CoV-2, helps in development of diagnostic tests and other tools for outbreak management. Various application are: Sequencing service to support real-time genomic infectious disease epidemiology, Phylogeny and surveillance studies, Virus variant identification and evolution tracking for vaccine development and SAR-CoV-2 genome research.