Virus discovery and epidemic tracing from high throughput metagenomic sequencing

NGS Next Generation Sequencing (Next Generation Sequencing) analysis pipelines are rapidly becoming part of the routine repertoire of research, clinical and public health laboratories in the public sector and private industry. Even for well-known (pathogenic) viruses, proper epidemiological analyses are becoming more and more difficult due to the lack of bioinformatics tools that can handle the large and growing size of datasets.

The VIROGENESIS consortium made full use of NGS by developing a software platform for end-users with tools underpinned by novel algorithms, models and bioinformatics methods. The speed and flexibility of the tools made it possible to run analyses on a daily basis for a variety of subjects, including diagnostics, phylogeography, phylodynamics and transmission of drug resistance.

Funding

VIROGENESIS was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 634650.