It鈥檚 not uncommon for viruses to transform during their life cycle and while at which they evolve is incredibly complex, it鈥檚 extremely important for developing preventative medicines and treatments that will mitigate against transmission and any serious health impacts experienced by infected individuals. 听
In recent months, confirmation of several more prominent variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the cause of the ongoing global pandemic), have been made in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil 鈥斕� with two of those variants . As these new variants are believed to spread more quickly, it鈥檚 critical that scientists continue to study and document these mutations so that public health officials can control their spread and ensure that current .
One of the ways in which scientists are able to detect and track variants of the COVID-19 virus and also other viruses, is through technology known as genome sequencing. We asked , who specializes in the fields of public health, epidemiology and bioinformatics and is the Faculty of Computer Science's Donald Hill Family Fellow, to explain how genomic data can be used to help fight against COVID-19.
What exactly is genome sequencing?
Genome sequencing is any of several methods that we use to work out the make-up of all the genetic material in an organism or virus. These methods and the analysis of the data that they produce are foundational to modern life sciences/medicine. Genome sequencing is being actively used to help understand the evolution and epidemiology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus i.e., how the virus is changing and spreading over time. Led by Jalees Nasir in at McMaster University, we, along with many other groups, have done research to sequence the genome of SARS-CoV-2. The raw data generated by genome sequencing requires a fair amount of computational processing to remove errors and identify any variants.
In an interesting bit of cross-discipline collaboration, I worked with a cosmologist from the Perimeter Institute (Prof. Kendrick Smith) to being used to do this in the McArthur lab. This has enabled hundreds to thousands of genomes to be pro
Ask an expert: Finlay Maguire on using genomic data to better understand how COVID鈥�19 and its variants behave
Lindsay Dowling-Savelle - January 28, 2021
One of the ways in which scientists are able to detect and track variants of the COVID-19 virus and also other viruses is through technology known as genome sequencing. (Illustration from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via Unplash)