If we are to define one global life-altering event of our generation, COVID-19 is likely to top the list. All of us witnessed the devastation that the COVID-19 pandemic wrought, at a scale so unprecedented that people almost everywhere paused what they were doing and started searching for answers together to end it quickly.
One of the initial breakthroughs in the definitive identification of SARS-CoV-2 as the causative agent of COVID-19 came from the application of unbiased genome sequencing technologies to infected patient samples. Scientists didn’t go the more time-consuming microbiology route with these samples; instead, and in a break from tradition, they were directly subjected to genome-sequencing and bioinformatic analysis, which helped the scientists quickly identify the virus.
This new approach – called metagenomics – was not only rapid but could also be deployed directly on patient samples, without any a priori knowledge of the infectious agent. Indeed the scale of sequencing during the pandemic rendered SARS-CoV-2 one of the most sequenced organisms in global history. The technique and its adoption also drastically changed the way pathogen identification would be undertaken thereafter.
