Unbiased Strain-Typing of Arbovirus Directly from Mosquitoes Using Nanopore Sequencing: A Field-forward Biosurveillance Protocol.

ABSTRACT: The future of infectious disease surveillance and outbreak response is trending towards smaller hand-held solutions for point-of-need pathogen detection. Here, samples of Culex cedecei mosquitoes collected in Southern Florida, USA were tested for Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus (VEEV), a previously-weaponized arthropod-borne RNA-virus capable of causing acute and fatal encephalitis in animal and human hosts. A single 20-mosquito pool tested positive for VEEV by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) on the Biomeme two3. The virus-positive sample was subjected to unbiased metatranscriptome sequencing on the Oxford Nanopore MinION and shown to contain Everglades Virus (EVEV), an alphavirus in the VEEV serocomplex. Our results demonstrate, for the first ti

SUBMITTER: Russell JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5883038 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature