key: cord-1033823-5nhi9sit
authors: Agrawal, Shelesh; Orschler, Laura; Lackner, Susanne
title: Metatranscriptomic Analysis Reveals SARS-CoV-2 Mutations in Wastewater of the Frankfurt Metropolitan Area in Southern Germany
date: 2021-04-15
journal: Microbiol Resour Announc
DOI: 10.1128/mra.00280-21
sha: 991ef302610d61b458bf7dd8891120133b694d62
doc_id: 1033823
cord_uid: 5nhi9sit

We report a sequencing analysis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA in wastewater samples collected in the Frankfurt metropolitan area of Germany. The majority of the detected mutations have been identified only in clinical genomes outside Frankfurt, indicating that the sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater can provide insights into emerging variants in a city.

SARS-CoV-2, was used. To determine whether the mutations detected in these samples had already been reported in clinical samples at different locations, we downloaded the clinically reported mutations and their corresponding locations from COVID CG (https://covidcg.org) (12) on 7 March 2021.

We detected 75 unique mutations across all of the samples, including 5 mutations reported outside Europe, 35 reported in Europe, 13 reported in Germany, 18 reported in the Frankfurt region, and 4 not reported (Fig. 1) . In the SL sample, we also observed D614G, a predominant mutation reported around the globe (13) and a key mutation associated with the B.1.1.7, B.1.351, and P.1 variants (14) . The 69/70 deletion mutation, a key mutation associated with B.1.1.7 (14) , was also found in the SL sample. Due to the plausible presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA of multiple variants in wastewater, WBE analysis can provide only indirect information about the variants. However, observations from this study suggest that an integration of genomic epidemiology into WBE may support identification of variants that have already been detected in a city, as well as those that have not yet been detected in clinical samples.

Data availability. The raw metagenomic sequence data are available in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under BioProject number PRJNA714504 and SRA accession numbers SRX10340342 (NR), SRX10340344 (SL), and SRX10340343 (GR).

This work was funded by the Hessian Ministry of Economics, Energy, Transport, and Housing within the framework of the IWB-EFRE program for knowledge and technology transfer under grant 20007030.

We thank the employees of the Stadtentwässerung Frankfurt (SEF) and members of our research group for their support with sample collection. 

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