SARS-CoV-2 Illumina MiSeq protocol v.2
Public Health Ontario
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Abstract
ARTIC amplicon sequencing protocol adapted from Josh Quick's https://www.protocols.io/view/ncov-2019-sequencing-protocol-v2-bdp7i5rn for illumina sequencing of SARS-CoV-2
Steps
cDNA preparation
Mix the following components:
Component Volume
50 µM random hexamers 1µL
10mM dNTPs mix (10mM each) 1µL
Total Mastermix volume 2µL
(template RNA) 11µL
Total Reaction volume 13µL
Prepare Mastermix (1:1) of random hexamers and dNTP.
Mix gently and pulse centrifuge to collect liquid at the bottom of the Mastermix tube.
Aliquot 2µL
of this mix into each well of a 96 well plate. Keep the plate in a cold block.
Use multichannel pipette to aliquot 11µL
of RNA to the plate from step 2. Seal plate, mix gently on plate mixer, and briefly centrifuge the plate to collect the liquid at bottom of the wells.
Incubate the reaction mix in thermocycler as follows:
`65°C` `0h 5m 0s`
`4°C` `0h 1m 0s`
Prepare the following mastermix:
Component Volume
SSIV Buffer 4µL
100mM DTT 1µL
RNaseOUT RNase Inhibitor 1µL
SSIV Reverse Transcriptase 1µL
Total Mastermix volume 7µL
(denatured RNA) 13µL
Total Reaction volume 20µL
Add 7µL
of mastermix to the denatured RNA from the previous step. Cover the plate with seal, mix gently on a plate mixer, and pulse spin the plate to collect liquid at the bottom of the tube.
Incubate in a thermocycler as follows:
42°C
0h 50m 0s
70°C
0h 10m 0s
4°C
Hold
Multiplex PCR
Prepare the multiplex PCR reactions as follows and aliquot in each well of a 96-well plate x2 (1 for each pool):
Component Pool 1 Pool 2
5X Q5 Reaction Buffer 5µL
5µL
10 mM dNTPs 0.5µL
0.5µL
Q5 Hot Start DNA Polymerase 0.25µL
0.25µL
Primer Pool 1 or 2 (10µM) 3.6µL
3.6µL
Nuclease-free water 13.15µL
13.15µL
Total Mastermix volume 22.5µL
22.5µL
(cDNA) 2.5µL
2.5µL
Total reaction volume 25µL
25µL
Prealiquot 22.5µL
of each mastermix(pool1 and pool2) to each plate (pool1 and pool2) accordingly.
In a BSC or workbench exclusive for RNA work, add 2.5µL
of cDNA from step 6 to each plate. Cover the plate with seal, mix gently on a plate mixer, and pulse spin the plate to collect liquid at the bottom of the tube.
Run the 3.5 hours PCR program for each pool:
Step Temperature Time Cycles
Heat Activation 98°C
0h 0m 30s
1
Denaturation 98°C
0h 0m 15s
35
Annealing 65°C
0h 5m 0s
35
Hold 4°C
1
Amplicon Clean-up
Combine the two pools of amplicons:
Add 12.5µL
of each Pool 1 and Pool 2 (total 25μl) in an 0.2 ml PCR plate (low binding plate).
Perform AMPure XP bead cleanup according to directions, as follows.
Add 25µL
of AMPure XP beads(well-vortexed and at Room temperature
) to the combined amplicons plate. Cover the plate with seal, mix gently on a plate mixer, and pulse spin the plate to collect liquid at the bottom of the tube. Incubate at Room temperature
for 0h 5m 0s
.
Place the plate on a magnetic rack for 0h 5m 0s
, or until the beads have pelleted and the supernatant is completely clear.
Remove and discard the liquid from each well with a multichannel pippette, being careful not to touch the bead pellet.
Add 200µL
of freshly prepared, Room temperature
80% ethanol to each well, incubate for 0h 0m 30s
, remove the ethanol carefully with a multichannel pipette.
Repeat ethanol wash (step 11.3 and 11.4).
Discard all ethanol and carefully remove as much residual ethanol as possible using a multichannel pipette. With the plate uncovered, incubate for 3-5 min or until the pellet loses its shine (if the pellet dries completely it will crack and become difficult to resuspend).
Remove from magnetic rack, add 28µL
of EB buffer to wells and mix gently on a plate mixer, ensuring beads are well re-suspended. Briefly centrifuge the plate to collect the liquid at the bottom of the wells. Incubate at Room temperature
for 0h 5m 0s
.
Place the plate on magnetic rack and incubate for 0h 2m 0s
to 0h 5m 0s
or until the beads have pelleted and the supernatant is completely clear.
Transfer 25µL
of the clear supernatant to a new plate, ensuring no beads are transferred.
Gel electrophoresis
Use remaining volumes from Pool 1 and Pool 2 to confirm amplification (step 9). Make 1% agarose gels with enough wells for all samples.
Load 2 l of the 100 bp ladder into gel on either side of each row of wells.
Dispense 2 l of 6X loading dye into each sample with a multichannel pipette, mix and load 2 l of this mix into the gel.
Run at 240V for 0h 20m 0s
. Visualize PCR products, confirm bands of approximately 300bp size.
Amplicon quantification and normalization
Quantify amplicons using Qubit dsDNA High Sensitivity kit and plate reader according to directions, as follows.
Create Qubit dsDNA HS working solution by mixing 99.5µL
buffer and 0.5µL
dye (X is the total number of samples, including 6 standards). Using a reservoir and multichannel pipette, dispense 98µL
into required number of wells of a Costar 3590 flat-bottom plate (or as appropriate for plate reader).
Dilute the clean, pooled amplicons (from step 11.9) 1:10 by mixing 3µL
of the amplicons in 27µL
of nuclease free water.
Make up serial standards using 1:2 dilutions of 10 ng/ul stock (Standard 2) from the Qubit HS. This creates 5 standards in the following concentrations: 10ng/ul
5ng/ul
2.5ng/ul
1.25ng/ul
0.625ng/ul
plus Standard 1 ng/ul
.
Mix 2µL
of diluted amplicons and each of the 6 standards 98µL
of Qubit HS working solution, mix and breifly centrifuge. Use plate reader to obtain concentration reading for each sample and standards. The Qubit standard curve is generated by the Qubit standards.
Based on the amplicon concentration, normalize of all the samples amplicon concentration to 0.2ng/ul
.
This can be done by adding 2.5µL
of diluted amplicon to a plate with prealiquoted, appropriate amount of nuclease free water.
Library preparation
Prepare sequencing libraries with Nextera XT DNA Library Prep kit at half volume, as follows.
Tagment DNA.
Thaw the following Nextera XT reagents on ice:
Amplicon tagment mix (ATM)
Tagment DNA buffer (TD)
Nextera PCR master mix (NPM)
Thaw the index primers, mix by vortex each vial and spin down the liquid at the bottom of the vials.
Neutralization buffer (NT) at Room temperature
Add the following reagents in order:
5µL
of TD buffer2.5µL
of0.2ng/ul
amplicon (from step 17)2.5µL
of ATM
Cover plate with plate seal, mix gently on plate mixer and centrifuge for 1 min.
Incubate in thermocycler with the following steps:
55°C
0h 5m 0s
10°C
hold
Remove the plate immediately once thermocycler reachs 10°C
, and proceed to neutralization.
Add 2.5µL
of NT buffer to each well and mix by pipetting up and down for 3 times, briefly spin down the plate and incubate at Room temperature
for 0h 5m 0s
.
PCR Amplification.
Thaw the following reagents on ice:
NMP
Index primers
Invert all reagents 3 - 5 times, followed by pulse spin.
Add 7.5 μl of Nextera PCR mastermix to each well.
From the pre-aliquoted index plate, add 5µL
(2.5µL
of each i5 and i7 index of the corresponding index combination to each well. Cover plate with plate seal, gently mix on plate mixer, and centrifuge for 1 min.
Run the PCR program to amplify the libraries:
Step Temperature Time Cycles
1 72°C
0h 3m 0s
1
2 95°C
0h 0m 30s
1
3 95°C
0h 0m 10s
12
3 55°C
0h 0m 30s
12
3 72°C
0h 0m 30s
12
4 72°C
0h 5m 0s
1
5 4°C
Hold 1
Library Clean-up
Clean Up Libraries
Repeat the same clean up process as step 11 using 20µL
of AMPure XP beads and 28µL
of resuspension buffer.
Library Quantification
Repeat the same quantification process as Step 16 but do NOT dilute libraries.
Normalization and loading on Miseq
Normalize each library to 4nanomolar (nM)
by dilution with nuclease free water.
Pool equal volume (e.g. 5µL
) from each of the normalized libraries into a single 1.5mL
microtube.
Verify fragment size and concentration using Agilent D5000 Assay on TapeStation 4200 as follows.
Add 2 μl of Sample Buffer and 2 μl of your pooled libraries in triplicate in a strip tube.
Vortex using the adapter at 2000 rpm for 1 min.
Load tubes, tapes, and tips. Start run. Using library concentration and fragment size, calculate the molarity of the libraries using the following formula:
Molarity = concentration ng/uL * (1515.1515/fragment size(bp))
Denature and load pooled libraries as follows.
Denature the pooled libraries by mixing 5µL
of pooled libraries and 5µL
of freshly made 0.2N NaOH solution.
Incubate for 0h 5m 0s
.
Add 990µL
of HT1 buffer and mix well with denatured pooled library by pipetting up and down 10 times with P1000.
Load 600µL
of the denatured, diluted pooled library into the loading position of the Illumina reagent cartridge (V2, 300 cycle kit). Load reagent cartridge, flow cell, and PR2 buffer into Miseq instrument, confirm the metrics and start the run.