title: The sensitivity of massively parallel sequencing for detecting candidate infectious agents associated with human tissue.
abstract: Massively parallel sequencing technology now provides the opportunity to sample the transcriptome of a given tissue comprehensively. Transcripts at only a few copies per cell are readily detectable, allowing the discovery of low abundance viral and bacterial transcripts in human tissue samples. Here we describe an approach for mining large sequence data sets for the presence of microbial sequences. Further, we demonstrate the sensitivity of this approach by sequencing human RNA-seq libraries spiked with decreasing amounts of an RNA-virus. At a modest depth of sequencing, viral transcripts can be detected at frequencies less than 1 in 1,000,000. With current sequencing platforms approaching outputs of one billion reads per run, this is a highly sensitive method for detecting putative infectious agents associated with human tissues.
authors: Genome Sciences Centre, BC Cancer Agency, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. rmoore@bcgsc.ca
authors: Richard A
authors: RA
authors: Moore
authors: René L
authors: RL
authors: Warren
authors: J Douglas
authors: JD
authors: Freeman
authors: Julia A
authors: JA
authors: Gustavsen
authors: Caroline
authors: C
authors: Chénard
authors: Jan M
authors: JM
authors: Friedman
authors: Curtis A
authors: CA
authors: Suttle
authors: Yongjun
authors: Y
authors: Zhao
authors: Robert A
authors: RA
authors: Holt
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