Deep sequencing is an appropriate tool for the selection of unique Hepatitis C virus (HCV) variants after single genomic amplification

PLoS One. 2017 Mar 31;12(3):e0174852. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174852. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) evolves rapidly in a single host and circulates as a quasispecies wich is a complex mixture of genetically distinct virus's but closely related namely variants. To identify intra-individual diversity and investigate their functional properties in vitro, it is necessary to define their quasispecies composition and isolate the HCV variants. This is possible using single genome amplification (SGA). This technique, based on serially diluted cDNA to amplify a single cDNA molecule (clonal amplicon), has already been used to determine individual HCV diversity. In these studies, positive PCR reactions from SGA were directly sequenced using Sanger technology. The detection of non-clonal amplicons is necessary for excluding them to facilitate further functional analysis. Here, we compared Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) with De Novo assembly and Sanger sequencing for their ability to distinguish clonal and non-clonal amplicons after SGA on one plasma specimen. All amplicons (n = 42) classified as clonal by NGS were also classified as clonal by Sanger sequencing. No double peaks were seen on electropherograms for non-clonal amplicons with position-specific nucleotide variation below 15% by NGS. Altogether, NGS circumvented many of the difficulties encountered when using Sanger sequencing after SGA and is an appropriate tool to reliability select clonal amplicons for further functional studies.

MeSH terms

  • Female
  • Genetic Variation / genetics
  • Genome, Viral / genetics
  • Genomics / methods
  • Glycoproteins / genetics
  • Hepacivirus / genetics*
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / methods*
  • Humans
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA / methods

Substances

  • Glycoproteins

Grants and funding

This work was supported from the Region Centre Val de Loire, "VIROTRANSAC" Grant from: convention 2014 00094545 / operation AE 2014-1850 (http://www.regioncentre-valdeloire.fr/accueil/les-services-en-ligne/appels-a-projets/recherche-et-innovation.html). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.