NEW YORK – Swift Biosciences and Arbor Biosciences, a division of Chiral Technologies, have partnered to offer a complete workflow for RNA-seq library preparation and targeted enrichment of the SARS-CoV-2 genome.
The new workflow, designed for epidemiological research and public health surveillance, combines Swift's patented Adaptase technology and RNA library kits with Arbor's myBaits technology for hybridization-based target enrichment of the virus for whole-genome sequencing.
Hybridization-based target enrichment can retrieve target sequences that have significant genomic rearrangements or mutations relative to the reference used for probe or primer design. This allows the Swift and Arbor workflow to be robust to structural nucleotide variants segregating within the SARS-CoV-2 population, the companies said.
The combined product offering, available from either company, includes modules for RNA fragmentation and reverse transcription, library preparation and amplification, indexed adapters, capture probes, blockers, and wash buffers for SARS-CoV-2 enrichment. No ribosomal RNA depletion or other enrichment or depletion steps are required.
"As research and public health labs continue to study mutation profiles of the virus across thousands of collected specimens, our collaboration puts a high-performing NGS workflow in their hands to efficiently prepare samples for analysis, even when heavily degraded or otherwise incompatible with PCR-based approaches," Drew McUsic, director of product management at Swift, said in a statement.