Genomics characterization and surveillance of microbial threats in West Africa - Christian Happi

Genomics characterization and surveillance of microbial threats in West Africa

Identification and characterization of microbial threats such as infectious bacteria and viruses from human-to-human or animal-to-human transmission remains crucial in public health, most especially in a globally connected world. Diseases from the most remote village in the world can spread to the most civilized city in under 48 hours because of ease in travel and doing business in the twenty-first century. Furthermore, West African countries have been adversely affected with several infectious diseases ranging from Lassa, Ebola, Yellow fever, Dengue and the novel human coronavirus which have resulted in thousands of deaths. Here, Happi et al applied an unbiased next generation sequencing approach also known as metagenomics to detect and characterize a wide range of infectious diseases in the region from clinical samples such as blood, saliva and nasopharyngeal swabs in symptomatic and asymptomatic people during different outbreaks.

Asides sequencing, they have adopted a novel and advanced diagnostic technique called CRISPR-Cas-13a (SHERLOCK) technology to develop high sensitive rapid diagnostic kits to detect SARS-CoV2, Lassa, Dengue and Ebola virus with both fluorescent and lateral flow readouts. In addition, they have also established a surveillance system in place in collaboration with health agencies in order to swiftly respond to disease outbreaks and also monitor genomic variants of viruses in real-time by using cutting edge computational tools and infrastructure at the ACEGID laboratory to study mutations and how they affect the host.