Module Exercise - MinION sequencing on site during an Ebola outbreak (90 min)-Teresa Strecker
- Due No due date
- Points 20
- Questions 13
- Time Limit None
Instructions
Directions
This exercise will illustrate the powerful application of portable sequencing of viral genomes in real time using the MinION nanosequencing device previously described in this module. The example used in this exercise is the Ebola virus which was responsible for a lethal outbreak in West Africa in 2014-2016, reaching as far as some patients in Dallas, TX, who had traveled from that region of Africa.
Today, Ebola is currently infecting people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and is showing that the current virus has genetic changes from outbreaks tracked in 2018. Read this short report about the current state of the Ebola virus in the DRG: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/04/studies-find-ebola-gene-differences-recent-drc-outbreaks
This report underscores the importance of the device you will learn about in this exercise.
In this exercise you will first learn about the Ebola viral genome using NCBI (genome database record for Zaire Ebola virus) and PDB-101 (Protein Data Bank's educational portal). Then you will be asked to read the short paper, Hoenen et al., (2016). Nanopore Sequencing as a Rapidly Deployable Ebola Outbreak Tool, Emerging Infectious Diseases 22: 331, and answer a series of questions about its content.