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TITLE

Methods and Applications of Metagenomic cfDNA Sequencing Assays

SPEAKER

Ms. Adrienne Chang

INSTITUTE

Vlamnick Lab, Cornell University

SUMMARY

Liquid biopsies based on circulating nucleic acids are a promising new avenue for unbiased and noninvasive identification and diagnosis of a wide variety of diseases. In this talk, I will cover two topics. First, I will discuss how measurement biases in the preanalytical workflow distort cell-free DNA fragmentation profiles and define the sensitivity of metagenomic cell-free DNA sequencing assays. I will show that the sensitivity of these assays is strongly influenced by the choice of preanalytical variables, such as the library preparation protocol. Second, I’ll discuss the utility of protocols that favor short fragment recovery for methylation profiling assays to trace and quantify tissue-specific injury to inform the host response to disease. Our work illustrates that significant gains in short fragment recovery for a wide range of applications can be obtained by easy-to-implement changes in the sample preparation workflow.