NLM DIR Seminar Schedule

Abstract:

Wastewater-based epidemiology relies on the high-throughput sequencing (HTS) of pathogens from wastewater, and it has been widely applied during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This approach has some advantages over conventional clinical-based epidemiology since it is a low-cost, non-invasive, and anonymous sampling opportunity that captures viral diversity from multiple symptomatic or asymptomatic individuals. However, there are challenges to the data analysis since viral sequences obtained are derived from multiple genomes. In this research, we have developed a bioinformatic framework to address some of those challenges, process the HTS data and detect the most likely variant of concern present in each location based on their defining single nucleotide variants, insertions, and deletions. In addition, we developed an approach to look at viral diversity at the community level using principal component analysis.