Submitted by tanteidaiko t3_zdpa6g in askscience
tanteidaiko OP t1_iz3zh1u wrote
Reply to comment by Bitchwar in What are Serotypes? Are they a kind of Phenotype / Genotype? by tanteidaiko
I think this the interesting and crucial point. Are serotypes mainly influenced by genotypes or are there epigenetic factors at play also.
I have done many Dengue E1 Sequencing and I frequently BLAST the sequences. We do see that these sequences can be catergorised into the serotypes themselves. So does mean that the sequences, and therefore genotype, confers the serotypes?
Bitchwar t1_iz42itz wrote
Not familiar with the lingo. Blast, is that a method in itself?
Maybe I can ask a couple of questions if you have the time: Are you sequencing serotype, transcriptomics and DNA of white blood cells that are infected? And can you predict serotype from DNA? Or only from transcriptomics?
tanteidaiko OP t1_iz42y1y wrote
BLAST is an online sequence alignment tool by NCBI.
I am sequencing the genome of the Dengue virus itself that we extract from an infected person. And we are able to determine the serotype affecting a person via real time PCR itself. So we draw the patient's blood, spin it down into serums, then we do nucleic acid extraction to obtain the RNA. Then we do real time RT-PCR to detect the presence of any sereotype of the virus.
feliciates t1_iz4hxej wrote
That's a very good question. Back when I was in the lab, serotypes couldn't be distinguished by sequencing but we seem to have moved towards being able to do that and the serotypes of strep have evidence for having a genetic basis:
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