Brad Langhorst
Product Development Group Leader - New England Biolabs
Designing around known variants to produce a more robust SARS-CoV-2 sequencing method
Date
Brad Langhorst
SFAF 2021- Brad Langhorst - NEB - 2021-09-28
VarSkip sequencing - SFAF 2021
By Brad Langhorst
VarSkip sequencing - SFAF 2021
High mutation rates observed in RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2 have been shown to disrupt amplification based detection and sequencing methods. To produce a more variant-resistant sequencing method, we identified all variants observed more than 1000 times in consensus sequences present in GISAID. We produced thousands of multiplex PCR designs and identified those that were least affected by known variants. During product development and scale-up, we periodically evaluated designs comparing with variants that arose during product development. NEB VarSkip designs exhibited fewer primer site variant overlaps than ARTICv4 or Midnight primer schemes.
