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Generating Whole Bacterial Genomes from Clinical Samples using a Target Enrichment Workflow
Published on: August 15, 2025
Selected insights from application of whole-genome sequencing for outbreak investigations
Vien Thi Minh Le1, Binh An Diep
1aDivision of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California bDivision of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA.
Purpose Of Review:
The advent of high-throughput whole-genome sequencing has the potential to revolutionize the conduct of outbreak investigation. Because of its ultimate resolution power for differentiating between closely related pathogen strains, whole-genome sequencing could augment the traditional epidemiologic investigations of infectious disease outbreaks.
Recent Findings:
The combination of whole-genome sequencing and intensive epidemiologic analysis provided new insights on the sources and transmission dynamics of large-scale epidemics caused by Escherichia coli and Vibrio cholerae, nosocomial outbreaks caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Mycobacterium abscessus, community-centered outbreaks caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and natural disaster-associated outbreaks caused by environmentally acquired molds.
Summary:
When combined with traditional epidemiologic investigation, whole-genome sequencing has proven useful for elucidating the sources and transmission dynamics of disease outbreaks. Development of a fully automated bioinformatics pipeline for the analysis of whole-genome sequence data is much needed to make this powerful tool more widely accessible.
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