Metagenomic Next-generation Sequencing: Application in Infectious Diseases

Abstract

Infectious diseases have always been a difficult clinical problem, especially severe infections and those infections of unknown origin. The invention of a new detection method is particularly important and urgent. Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) is a high-throughput sequencing method that sequences microbial DNA and RNAs from fluid or solid tissue samples in hours. All important sequence data that is present in a specimen can be used for pathogen identification after a series of bioinformatics analysis. Recently, mNGS has been used in preclinical trials to find and identify pathogens from the respiratory system, central nervous system, bloodstream, and other infections. mNGS technology has advantages of being faster, accurate, and detection of unknown pathogens over conventional laboratory methods for microbial identification and detection of antimicrobial resistance and virulence markers. However, mNGS has limitations that include human source DNA and RNA removal, intracellular bacteria extraction difficulties, and background pollution. mNGS technologies are innovative methods, especially when a bacterial culture was negative; however, a comprehensive collection of clinical evidence is required before they move from research into clinical laboratories.