Section 3. Studying Viral Pathogens with High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) (from DOI: 10.3390/v12020211)
From publication: "Current Trends in Diagnostics of Viral Infections of Unknown Etiology" published as Viruses; 2020 Feb 14 ; 12 (2); DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/v12020211
Section 3. Studying Viral Pathogens with High Throughput Sequencing (HTS)
The invention of HTS:alias next generation sequencing (NGS):has revolutionized research in biology and medical science, including virology, allowing new viruses to be genetically analyzed without prior cultivation. Sequencing of viral genomes has already become a pivotal part of virological research, aiding clinicians in identifying complex infections. It is gradually growing to become one of the main methods in molecular diagnostics, development of vaccines and searches for new therapeutic strategies. Over the years, it has pushed the frontiers of molecular epidemiology and evolutionary genomics.
Another type of NGS-based analysis is metagenomics, which was comprehensively defined by Chen and Pachter as "the application of modern genomics technique without the need for isolation and lab cultivation of individual species". In essence, it offers the means to investigate the taxonomic diversity of a microbial community in an environmental or biological sample as the entirety of present nucleic acids is studied. Further applications of this method extend to transcriptomics and proteomics, allowing for a deeper insight into several aspects of pathogens, such as drug resistance, adaptation mechanisms and vast communication networks between species.