Development of a highly sensitive method for detection of viruses using the metagenome analysis

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K21140
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Infectious disease medicine; Laboratory medicine
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: Motooka Daisuke 大阪大学, 微生物病研究所, 特任助教(常勤) (10636830)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: メタゲノム

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Clinical metagenomics using high-throughput sequencing is widely applied to comprehensively detect pathogens in infectious diseases. The pathogen identification approach is based on a similarity search of known nucleotides along with taxonomic assignment of sequence reads produced by high-throughput sequencing. However, because the relative abundance of pathogens in the sequence reads is very low (generally < 0.1%), we need to sequence massive numbers of reads to detect pathogens. Consequently, it is difficult to improve sensitivity, cut cost, and accelerate data analysis. To resolve this problem, we developed a highly sensitive method to detect pathogenic viruses from metagenomics data. We performed experiments to concentrate and purify several types of viruses (e.g., influenza virus) from culture supernatants or clinical samples using a hydroxyapatite column and succeeded in obtaining a maximum of 256-fold concentration of the viruses.

Free Research Field

生命情報科学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

感染症対策における臨床検体中の病原体を探索する方法として、次世代シークエンサーを用いたメタゲノム解析法が利用されている。本研究では、臨床検体中のウイルスの濃縮法開発に取り組み、カラム精製法や遊離核酸除去法を検討し、100倍以上のウイルス濃縮に成功した。高感度、迅速かつ安価な病原体検出法の確立に必須の技術であり、網羅的な病原体探索法の臨床応用にとって有用な成果が得られた。