Since late 2020, several prominent SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern have emerged, harboring specific mutations which increase viral transmissibility Delta variant) and which appear to reduce the efficacy of some current vaccines.  As a result, there is an elevated need for rapid scale-up of genomic surveillance to characterize circulating strains and detect newly emerging, potentially more harmful variants as early as possible.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is the most efficient and cost-effective technology for this purpose. NGS enables multiple samples to be processed in parallel and the entire viral genome to be sequenced at depth.  Nevertheless, current NGS solutions require complex, multi-step workflows, are challenging to automate and allow limited sample multiplexing. 

In this webinar, we will describe an accelerated workflow for SARS-CoV-2 sequencing that:

• Cuts viral amplification and library prep in half (to 4 hours) compared with current ARTIC-based approaches

• Enables twice the throughput per flow cell lane (multiplexing of up to 768 samples)

• Generates high-yield libraries with superior sequence uniformity and depth of coverage due to the tiling amplicon design of the solution

• Significantly reduces plasticware use