A universal, single primer amplification protocol (R-SPA) to perform whole genome sequencing of segmented dsRNA reoviruses

Background. The Reoviridae family represents the largest family of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) viruses, and the members have been isolated from a wide range of mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, plants. Orthoreoviruses, one of the 15 recognized genera in the Reoviridae family, can infect humans and nearly all mammals, and birds. Genomic characterization of reoviruses has not been adopted on a large-scale due to the complexity of obtaining sequences for all 10 segments. Results. In this study, we developed a time-efficient, and practical method to enrich reovirus sequencing reads from isolates that allowed for full genome recovery using single-primer amplification method coupled with next generation sequencing. We refer to this protocol as reovirus-Single Primer Amplification (R-SPA). Our results demonstrated that most of the genes were covered with at least 500 reads per base space. Furthermore, R-SPA covered both 59 and 39 end of each reovirus genes. Conclusion. A universal and fast amplification protocol that yields double-stranded cDNA in sufficient abundance and facilitates and expedites the whole genome sequencing of reoviruses was presented in this study.