Detecting SARS-CoV-2 lineages and mutational load in municipal wastewater and a use-case in the metropolitan area of Thessaloniki, Greece.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented global crisis necessitating novel approaches for, amongst others, early detection of emerging variants relating to the evolution and spread of the virus. Recently, the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater has emerged as a useful tool to monitor the prevalence of the virus in the community. Here, we propose a novel methodology, called lineagespot, for the monitoring of mutations and the detection of SARS-CoV-2 lineages in wastewater samples using next-generation sequencing (NGS). Our proposed method was tested and evaluated using NGS data produced by the sequencing of 14 wastewater samples from the municipality of Thessaloniki, Greece, covering a 6-month period. The results showed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater data.

SUBMITTER: Pechlivanis N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8854625 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature