Accès ouvert

Phylo-Plex: a phylogenetically informed, low-cost amplicon sequencing platform for deployable high-resolution genomic epidemiology

Article scientifique 2026 Anglais

Résumé

Genomic pathogen surveillance is a powerful tool for public health and research, but is costly and unachievable in low-resource settings. Most sub-genomic typing methods sacrifice resolution whilst remaining costly. We developed "Phylo-Plex", a novel approach that identifies information-rich genomic regions to maximise phylogenetic information whilst minimising the number of regions. Applied to Treponema pallidum and Neisseria gonorrhoeae, we designed a high-resolution multiplex PCR sequencing scheme for lineage tracking pathogens with different extremes of genome variation. For Treponema pallidum, we also designed and evaluated the Phylo-Plex scheme in the laboratory and field settings by sequencing 72 clinical samples using MinION Flongle cells. Our T. pallidum scheme comprising 59 multiplex amplicons achieved high discrimination of fine-scale sublineages comparable to those defined using whole genomes, and demonstrating a qPCR detection limit ≤Ct 32. Variant calls from MinION amplicon sequencing were highly correlated with Illumina whole genome sequencing. We successfully deployed the method in a low-resource laboratory in Zimbabwe, costed at <£300/24 samples (£12.47/sample). Phylo-Plex enables low-cost tracking of priority pathogenic lineages in low resource settings and at scale.

Citer ce document

Beale, M., Shetty, V., Ambridge, K., Lacey, G., Dougan, S., Roberts-Sengier, W., Sampher, B., Lassalle, F., Dorman, M., Mahlangu, M., Venter, J., Dias, B., Chipinduro, M., Washaya, T., Rodgers, L., Makamure, B., Dauya, E., Marks, M., Müller, E., Ferrand, R., Thomson, N. (2026). Phylo-Plex: a phylogenetically informed, low-cost amplicon sequencing platform for deployable high-resolution genomic epidemiology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75002-y

Accès au document

Texte intégral en lecture en ligne, réservé aux abonnés SPHAERO et aux membres de l'institution. Se connecter

Voir l'article sur le site de la revue

Statistiques

Consultations : 1

Téléchargements : 0