Rising population density and global mobility are among the reasons why pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spread so rapidly across the globe. The policy response to such pandemics will always have to include accurate monitoring of the spread, as this provides one of the few alternatives to total lockdown. However, COVID-19 diagnosis is currently performed almost exclusively by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Although this is efficient, automatable, and acceptably cheap, reliance on one type of technology comes with serious caveats, as illustrated by recurring reagent and test shortages. We therefore developed an alternative diagnostic test that detects proteolytically digested SARS-CoV-2 proteins using mass spectrometry (MS). We established the Cov-MS consortium, consisting of 15 academic laboratories and several industrial partners to increase applicability, accessibility, sensitivity, and robustness of this kind of SARS-CoV-2 detection. This, in turn, gave rise to the Cov-MS Digital Incubator that allows other laboratories to join the effort, navigate, and share their optimizations and translate the assay into their clinic. As this test relies on viral proteins instead of RNA, it provides an orthogonal and complementary approach to RT-PCR using other reagents that are relatively inexpensive and widely available, as well as orthogonally skilled personnel and different instruments. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD022550.

Nanopore sequencing for forensic short tandem repeats (STR) genotyping comes with the advantages associated with massively parallel sequencing (MPS) without the need for a high up-front device cost, but genotyping is inaccurate, partially due to the occurrence of homopolymers in STR loci. The goal of this study was to apply the latest progress in nanopore sequencing by Oxford Nanopore Technologies in the field of STR genotyping. The experiments were performed using the state of the art R9.4 flow cell and the most recent R10 flow cell, which was specifically designed to improve consensus accuracy of homopolymers. Two single-contributor samples and one mixture sample were genotyped using Illumina sequencing, Nanopore R9.4 sequencing, and Nanopore R10 sequencing. The accuracy of genotyping was comparable for both types of flow cells, although the R10 flow cell provided improved data quality for loci characterized by the presence of homopolymers. We identify locus-dependent characteristics hindering accurate STR genotyping, providing insights for the design of a panel of STR loci suited for nanopore sequencing. Repeat number, the number of different reference alleles for the locus, repeat pattern complexity, flanking region complexity, and the presence of homopolymers are identified as unfavorable locus characteristics. For single-contributor samples and for a limited set of the commonly used STR loci, nanopore sequencing could be applied. However, the technology is not mature enough yet for implementation in routine forensic workflows.

Rising population density and global mobility are among the reasons why pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spread so rapidly across the globe. The policy response to such pandemics will always have to include accurate monitoring of the spread, as this provides one of the few alternatives to total lockdown. However, COVID-19 diagnosis is currently performed almost exclusively by Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR). Although this is efficient, automatable and acceptably cheap, reliance on one type of technology comes with serious caveats, as illustrated by recurring reagent and test shortages. We therefore developed an alternative diagnostic test that detects proteolytically digested SARS-CoV-2 proteins using Mass Spectrometry (MS). We established the Cov-MS consortium, consisting of fifteen academic labs and several industrial partners to increase applicability, accessibility, sensitivity and robustness of this kind of SARS-CoV-2 detection. This in turn gave rise to the Cov-MS Digital Incubator that allows other labs to join the effort, navigate and share their optimizations, and translate the assay into their clinic. As this test relies on viral proteins instead of RNA, it provides an orthogonal and complementary approach to RT-PCR, using other reagents that are relatively inexpensive and widely available, as well as orthogonally skilled personnel and different instruments. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD022550.

Forensic STR profiling using massively parallel sequencing (MPS) has gained much attention as an alternative for the traditional capillary electrophoresis (CE) methods. Oxford Nanopore Technologies recently developed the 'MinION', a pocket-sized nanopore sequencer with promising features that could be useful in the field of forensic genetics. We applied this technology for forensic sequencing in a pilot study. Using standard STR primers, originally designed for multiplex PCR and CE, we developed a library preparation method suited for nanopore sequencing. Several analysis approaches were evaluated to explore the usefulness of the generated data: we developed and applied both a sequence-based and an amplicon length-based analysis on data originating from a 14-loci multiplex PCR on a single contributor DNA sample. Despite the high sequencing error rate, the analyses yielded partial forensic profiles with some useful evidential value.