Infectious Diseases & ARTIC Sequencing

Next generation sequencing (NGS) has revolutionized the study of infectious diseases, providing detailed insights into pathogen genomics, transmission dynamics, and outbreak management. For over 15 years, NEBNext^® has been supporting researchers, vaccine developers, molecular diagnostics companies, and public health labs with high-quality, reliable library prep solutions for a range of NGS platforms and throughputs. When accuracy and speed matter most, like during an evolving public health threat, NEBNext reagents and tools are ready to help! See our up-to-date list of Featured Products for Infectious Disease & ARTIC Sequencing, including the new NEBNext RSV Primer Module.

Together, the COVID-19 pandemic and the public health response to it are the most recent examples of how robust next generation sequencing (NGS) capacity is an essential element of a comprehensive infectious disease-preparedness plan. Public health labs, core labs, and individual research and development (R&D) teams mobilized to quickly and definitively identify the causative microbe with sequencing, develop point-of-care testing solutions, and watchfully monitor for novel mutations.  

NEB’s Primer Monitor Tool enables ongoing surveillance of new sequence variants that impact sequencing-primer binding  in SARS-CoV-2 and RSV (A/B).

ARTIC Network Method

Supporting the fight against COVID-19, NEBNext^® scientists developed a suite of NGS library prep products based on the ARTIC Network’s SARS-CoV-2 sequencing protocol (Quick, J (2020) nCoV-2019 sequencing protocol v2 (GunIt)). Library prep kits were made available for SARS-CoV-2 sequencing on Illumina^® (with and without in-built enzymatic fragmentation, and Oxford Nanopore Technologies^® platforms, for broad applicability with existing sequencing infrastructure. The product development and bioinformatics teams at New England Biolabs ceaselessly tracked new variants to ensure that the available sequencing primers were optimized and updated for new variants as they were established. 
 
Learn more about how New England Biolabs (NEB) supported SARS-CoV-2 sequencing with their range of NGS library prep reagents at the Sequencing and COVID-19 page. 
 
For details on New England Biolabs’ complete offering for infectious disease R&D, refer to Supporting Infectious Disease Research and Development. 
 
For details on how the NEBNext ARTIC products, based on the original work of the ARTIC Network, are designed for reliable, accurate, and fast sequencing of SARS-CoV-2, visit NEBNext^® ARTIC product for SARS-CoV-2 sequencing.