QuaID: Enabling Earlier Detection of Recently Emerged SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern in Wastewater.

ABSTRACT: As clinical testing declines, wastewater monitoring can provide crucial surveillance on the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VoC) in communities. Multiple recent studies support that wastewater-based SARS-CoV-2 detection of circulating VoC can precede clinical cases by up to two weeks. Furthermore, wastewater based epidemiology enables wide population-based screening and study of viral evolutionary dynamics. However, highly sensitive detection of emerging variants remains a complex task due to the pooled nature of environmental samples and genetic material degradation. In this paper we propose quasi-unique mutations for VoC identification, implemented in a novel bioinformatics tool (QuaID) for VoC detection based on quasi-unique mutations. The benefits of QuaID are three-fold:

SUBMITTER: Sapoval N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9327636 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature