Fully automated RNA library preparation for sequencing respiratory viruses

Targeted sequencing of respiratory viruses’ genomes is important to identify novel viral variants. Compared to amplicon sequencing, target enrichment through hybrid–capture methods provide high sensitivity of variant detection and more uniform and complete coverage. In this webinar, we describe automation of the Illumina RNA Prep with Enrichment (L) Tagmentation kit using the Illumina Respiratory Virus Oligos Panel v2 on the Biomek i7 Hybrid Automated Workstation. We demonstrated/validated the method using SARS-CoV-2 positive samples collected at the Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, DEU. Our sequencing data shows that the automated method enables comprehensive profiling of viral genome at high throughput, with minimal hands-on time.