New research: Low-cost method for finding new variants of coronavirus

Thursday, 24 June 2021Newsdesk

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a technology for cost-effective surveillance of the global spread of new SARS-CoV-2 variants. The technique is presented in the journal Nature Communications.

New Delhi, 24 June 2021

As per news report of The Indian Express,Since the onset of the pandemic, thousands of viral genomes have been sequenced to reconstruct the evolution and global spread of the coronavirus. This is important for identifying particularly concerning variants that are more contagious, pathogenic, or resistant to the existing vaccines. For global surveillance of the genome, it is crucial to sequence and analyse many samples in a cost-effective way. Researchers in the Bienko-Crosetto laboratory at Karolinska Institutet and Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) in Sweden have developed a new method, named COVseq, that can be used for surveillance of the viral genome on a massive scale at a low cost.

Source -The Indian Express