Bonnie Brown from the Virginia Commonwealth University presented at London Calling on “An Epidemiological River Metagenome Based on MinION.” James River is a major river that has impacts on the environment. Brown is a conservation biologist curious about the fluctuations in the river’s biodiversity. They began performing whole genome sequencing and identified several epidemiologically relevant information. Brown explained that there are prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and fishes in these waters that are of interest. Importantly, some organisms may cause disease. Short reads did not provide the context and specificity needed. Long reads were annotated, providing additional information. Brown has used MG-RAST and has now tried Kraken. They sequenced libraries from synthetic communities to test the system and will expand sampling.
