Genomics and Epidemiological Surveillance Stephanie W
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NEWS & ANALYSIS GENOME WATCH Genomics and epidemiological surveillance Stephanie W. Lo and Dorota Jamrozy This month’s Genome Watch highlights viral transmission, identify viral mutations D614 vari ant, which might be indicative of how genomic surveillance can provide and integrate viral data with health data2. By potential positive selection. The viral genome important information for identifying June 2020, the consortium sequenced >20,000 data were linked with patient clinical infor- and tracking emerging pathogens such SARS- CoV-2 genomes and defined transmis- mation, which showed that the G614 variant as SARS- CoV-2. sion lineages based on phylogeny. Open data might be associated with potentially higher sharing and standardized lineage definitions viral loads but not with disease severity. The timely detection and surveillance of infec- (Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Updated data and current global counts of tious diseases and responses to pandemics Data (GISAID)) were established to enable the spike 614 variants are available in the are crucial but challenging. Whole-genome global efforts in detecting emerging lineages COVID-19 Viral Genome Analysis Pipeline. sequencing (WGS) is a common tool for path- and mutations that are relevant for outbreak Genomic surveillance can generate a rich ogen identification and tracking, establishing control and vaccine development on an inter- source of information for tracking pathogen transmission routes and outbreak control. national level3. By the end of June 2020, >57,000 transmission and evolution on both national At the turn of 2019/20, Wu et al1 used SARS- CoV-2 genomes from around 100 dif- and international levels. More importantly, metagenomic RNA sequencing to identify the ferent countries have been deposited in the the recent application of genomics in surveil- aetiology of an at this point unknown respira- GISAID database. To overcome the challenge in lance of COVID-19 highlighted its useful- tory disease in a single patient in Wuhan, China, data analysis and interpretation, user-friendly ness in the nearly real-time response to a public where several cases of severe respir atory infec- web- based applications were designed for lin- health crisis. tions have been reported. The authors identi- age assignment (Pangolin COVID-19 Lineage Stephanie W. Lo ✉ and Dorota Jamrozy ✉ fied the potential causative pathogen as a new Assigner) and to interactively visualize the cir- Parasites and Microbes, Wellcome Sanger Institute, coronavirus by reconstructing the viral genome culating lineages on national and international Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK. from the bronchoal veolar lavage fluid sample scales (for example, Microreact and Nextstrain). ✉e- mail: [email protected] of the patient. In early January 2020, the viral The international effort towards open data https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-020-0421-0 genome sequence was released, which facilitated sharing is of major scientific benefit, enabling 1. Wu, F. et al. A new coronavirus associated with human the development of rapid molecular diagnos- monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 evolution in nearly respiratory disease in China. Nature 579, 265–269 (2020). 4 tics assays worldwide. Subsequently, the virus real time and on a global level. Korber et al. 2. The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG- UK) consortium. (now known as SARS-CoV-2, which causes the developed a bioinformatics pipeline to track An integrated national scale SARS- CoV-2 genomic surveillance network. Lancet Microbe 1, e99–e100 ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) changes in the SARS-CoV-2 spike glyco protein, (2020). pandemic) rapidly spread globally, and there which mediates host cell entry and is a key 3. Rambaut, A. et al. A dynamic nomenclature proposal for SARS-CoV-2 lineages to assist genomic has been an immediate effort to study viral vaccine target. The pipeline monitors changes epidemiology. Nat. Microbiol. https://doi.org/10.1038/ transmission and evolution in the amino acid sequence of spike over time to s41564-020-0770-5 (2020). 4. Korber, B. et al. Tracking changes in SARS- CoV-2 using WGS. For example, identify variants that are concomitantly Spike: evidence that D614G increases infectivity SARS-CoV-2 Sequen- increasing in frequency in differ- of the COVID-19 virus. Cell https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.cell.2020.06.043 (2020). cing for Public Health ent geographic locations. The Competing interests Emergency Response, analysis, which was enabled The authors declare no competing interests. Epidemiology and Sur- by data from GISAID, sug- veillance (SPHERES) in gested that a SARS- CoV-2 RELATED LINKS the United States and the variant carrying a particu- COG- UK: https://www.cogconsortium.uk COVID-19 Viral Genome Analysis pipeline: https://cov.lanl. 2 COVID-19 Genomics UK lar spike mutation (D614G) gov/content/index (COG- UK) in the United became globally dominant GISAID: https://www.gisaid.org/ Microreact: https://microreact.org/showcase Kingdom. over a period of one month. Nextstrain: https://nextstrain.org Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak The latter consortium C Comparison of different re LINeages COVID-19 Lineage Assigner: https://pangolin. d d was launched in March 2020 i te regions revealed consistent t: i cog- uk.io/ P im hil L SPHERES: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019- ncov/ as a nationwide genomic surveil- ip ure patterns of the G614 vari ant Pat at covid- data/spheres.html lance network that aims to track enall/Springer N replacing a previously established 478 | SEPTEMBER 2020 | VOLUME 18 ww w. na tu re .c om /n rm icro.