A CRISPR powered NGS library prep to improve viral, bacterial and host transcript detection in shotgun metagenomic sequencing

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought global awareness to the dangers of emerging pathogens to human health and welfare. Common molecular tools used at scale, such as PCR, are best suited for detecting known pathogens. Preparing humanity against future zoonotic pandemics requires unbiased surveillance tools, such as next generation sequencing (NGS). This approach enables the unbiased detection of viral sequences (known and unknown), identifies possible co-infections, and provides insights into host transcriptional response. This webinar will introduce a CRISPR-based strategy improving sequence complexity and discovery in libraries prepared from complex biological samples. The critical component enabling this approach is Jumpcode Genomics’ CRISPRclean technology which removes abundant mammalian and bacterial ribosomal RNA sequences from NGS libraries. We will review data from >40 nasopharyngeal samples collected from SARS-CoV-2 testing, demonstrating >90% depletion of all human and bacterial ribosomal sequences, 3-to-7-fold increase in viral and bacterial transcriptome coverage and 5-to-10-fold increase in coverage of mid to low expressing host transcripts.