Grappling with the genomics of Ebola
Researchers are struggling to lock in genetic analysis related to the genetic mutability of Ebola due to delayed and incomplete data from around the world, according to a review published online today in Science.
The review noted that more than 13,000 people have been struck by the virus and the death toll is estimated at 5,000.
Gretchen Vogel for Science detailed a study published in August conducted by Pardis Sabeti and Stephen Gire from the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., which provided an analysis of 99 genomes from the viruses infecting 78 people in or near Kenema, Sierra Leone, during the summer. The study accounted for an estimated 50 percent of known cases in Serra Leone during the period. The sequence information, which provided a snapshot of how the virus changed as it was transferred patient-to-patient, was held in public databases. It showed how one variant fell off as another gained strength over time, but since the outbreak expanded rapidly into the epidemic that it is today, researchers have not been able to update this data from Sierra Leone and it doesn’t seem to be any easier for other research groups.
Part of the problem is getting approvals from health ministries under siege. Virologist Stephan Gunther from Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNI) in Hamburg, Germany, reported that sample exports have been suspended from Liberia and Nigeria, but 3,000 samples have been received by the BNI from Guinea. These are being stored for Guinean authorities in a high-security lab. However, critical fieldwork has kept researchers from being able to sequence the data.
The Institut Pasteur in France plans to start sequencing data from “a couple of hundred samples" from West Africa in the next several weeks.
Viral sequences gathered from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not yet been made public in data repositories, which some researchers are frowning upon.
Preliminary samples indicate that the virus is mutating rapidly, but it’s not clear yet whether these changes mean that it is becoming more lethal.