GAS_Vaccinology__capturing_Global_Vaccine_Antigen_Diversity__PacBio_. GAS_Vaccinology__capturing_Global_Vaccine_Antigen_Diversity__PacBio_

This project consists of a two-phase action plan designed to validate the overall aims of the GAS vaccinology programme as well as generating publishable units from scientifically robust comparisons. Apart from vaccine antigen design, this programme of sequencing will support targeted analyses of specific disease associations and global transmission patterns of prominent sequence types- all ongoing sequencing based research foci that Sanger (Mark Davies) is currently analysing. PacBio (30) There are reference genomes from 12 different GAS emm sequence types available. However, only the strains for 6 of these are publically available. The premise behind the CANVAS initiative is to select an additional 30 genetically diverse GAS (from our global database) that will be used in vaccine assay development and both the strains/genomes will be made publically available as a gold standard for GAS wet lab and genetic analyses throughout the world. A caveat of the GAS reference strains to date is that most are from the West. GAS epidemiological patterns show a disparate geographical relationship. Furthermore, these will be used as reference genomes to examine microevolution of ‘nonwestern’ genome types (a secondary objective of the Hi-seq component of the proposal). This data is part of a pre-publication release. For information on the proper use of pre-publication data shared by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute please see http://www.sanger.ac.uk/datasharing/