Next-Generation Sequencing Applications for the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory

Traditional clinical microbiology applications involve lengthy culture and multiple real-time PCR or serologic assays.  Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology can provide culture independent identification of any microorganism (bacteria, fungi, protists and viruses) found in sequence databases. Innovative techniques developed at Illumina allow microbiologists to perform clinical metagenomic (CMg) analysis of DNA with 24h turnaround in their own laboratory from fresh, frozen, cultured or FFPE samples even with very small amount of starting material. In addition to species level identification these genome sequencing assays can reveal the presence of antimicrobial resistance genes in the organisms detected. During this webinar we will also discuss applications of NGS for viral isotyping and epidemiological tracking of isolates for the management of healthcare acquired infection outbreaks.