[Increasing the Uniformity of Genome Fragment Coverage for High-Throughput Sequencing of Influenza A Virus].

The high variability of the influenza A virus poses a significant threat to public health, therefore monitoring viral strains and studying their genetic properties are important tasks. One part of this monitoring includes sequencing of influenza A viruses of any subtype and analysis of their whole genomes, which is especially important in cases of interspecies adaptation and reassortment. High-throughput sequencing technologies have significantly extended the capabilities of influenza virus epidemiological surveillance. The preparation stages for next generation sequencing (NGS) of influenza A virus include whole genome amplification using one-step RT-PCR, the results of which vary greatly depending on the sample type and quality, that, in turn, affects the coverage of virus fragments and the sequencing results in general. In this work, we propose to supplement the aforementioned technique of whole genome amplification of influenza A virus with sequential suppression PCRs to obtain an even coverage of viral segments of different lengths, which allows sequencing of samples with lower read coverage without decreasing the sequencing quality.

A multiple drug-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae of serotype 15A occurring from serotype 19A by capsular switching.

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a highly recombinogenic pathogen. The ability of pneumococci to acquire and incorporate exogenous DNA is an important evolutionary mechanism for adaptation to clinical interventions such as antibiotic therapy and vaccination. Herein, using whole genome sequencing we detected a multiple drug-resistant serotype 15A pneumococcus emerged by capsular switching from serotype 19A/ST276. The dissemination of recombinant multiple drug-resistant pneumococcal clones with non-vaccine type capsule is of concern and warrants thorough monitoring of serotype and genotype structure within pneumococcal populations.

Perspectives of using Illumina MiSeq for identification of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.

Arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi (AMF) form one of the most common symbiosis with the majority of land plants. AMF supply the plant with various mineral elements, primarily phosphorus, and improve the water supply. The search for the most effective AMF strains for symbiosis and the creation of microbial preparations on that basis is an important task for modern biology. Owing to the difficulties of cultivation without a host plant and their high genetic polymorphism, identifying AMF is very difficult. A high number of cryptic species often makes morphological identification unreliable. Recent years have seen a growth in the number of AMF biodiversity studies performed by modern NGS-based methods, Illumina MiSeq in particular. Currently, there are still many questions that remain for the identification of AМF. The most important are whether conservative or variable sequences should be used to select a marker for barcoding and whether universal primers or those specific to AMF should be used. In our work, we have successfully used universal primers ITS3 and ITS4 for the sequencing in Illumina MiSeq of the 5.8S rDNA - ITS2 region of the 35S rRNA genes, which contain both a conservative and variable regions. The molecular genetic approach for AMF identification was quite effective and allowed us to reliably identify eight of nine isolates to the species level: five isolates of Rhizophagus irregularis, and one isolate of R. invermaius, Paraglomus laccatum, and Claroideoglomus etunicatum, respectively. For all five R. irregularis isolates, high variability in the ITS region and the absence of ecotopic-related molecular characters in the ITS2 region were demonstrated. The NCBI data is still insufficient for accurate AMF identification of Acaulospora sp. isolates from the genus to the species level.