SARS-CoV-2 Had Multiple Introductions into Northern California

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To keep you updated on the latest Biotechnology industry news, Lab.Equipment has sourced this notable article from GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News for you:

California currently has the third largest number of COVID-19 cases (roughly 131,000) with less than half of New York and just slightly less than New Jersey. An investigation into the genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in northern California suggests that, distinct from virus transmission patterns identified elsewhere, virus arrived in northern California through a complex series of introductions, not only from state to state but also from international travel.

A large collaborative effort analyzed SARS-CoV-2 genomes from a small number of California-based patients from late January to mid-March 2020, taken from 36 patients spanning nine counties and the Grand Princess cruise ship.

The work is published in Science in the paper, “Genomic surveillance reveals multiple introductions of SARS-CoV-2 into northern California.”

Though genomic epidemiology of emerging viruses has proven useful for tracking virus evolution and transmissions, in California, real-time genomic epidemiology data of COVID-19 to inform public health interventions has been lacking.

In this study led by Xianding Deng, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, at the University of California, San Francisco, the researchers used a method they had recently developed to assemble viral genomes directly from clinical samples, called Metagenomic Sequencing with Spiked Primer Enrichment (MSSPE), to better understand the nature of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in northern California. MSSPE is used for enriching the viral sequences that is, according to the researchers, “simple, low cost, fast, and deployable on either benchtop or portable nanopore sequencers.”

The team applied MSSPE to positive viral samples recovered from 36 California-based patients. Sequencing the viral genomes and placing them, along with other pu... Want to read more? You can find the entire article in the GEN Blog.

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