Viral metagenomics approaches for high-resolution screening of multiplexed arthropod and plant viral communities

Abstract

Viral metagenomic approaches have become essential for culture-independent and sequence-independent viral detection and characterization. This chapter describes an accurate and efficient approach to (1) concentrate viral particles from arthropods and plants, (2) remove contaminating non-encapsidated nucleic acids, (3) extract and amplify both viral DNA and RNA, and (4) analyze high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data by bioinformatics. Using this approach, up to 96 arthropod or plant samples can be multiplexed in a single HTS library.