NanoCore: core-genome-based bacterial genomic surveillance and outbreak detection in healthcare facilities from Nanopore and Illumina data

Genomic surveillance involves sequencing the genomes and measuring the relatedness of bacteria from different patients or locations in the same healthcare facility, enabling an improved understanding of pathogen transmission pathways and the detection of "silent" outbreaks that would otherwise go undetected. It has become an indispensable tool for the detection and prevention of healthcare-associated infections and is routinely applied by many healthcare institutions. The earlier an outbreak or transmission chain is detected, the better; in this context, the Oxford Nanopore sequencing technology has important potential advantages over traditionally used short-read sequencing technologies, because it supports "real-time" data generation and the cost-effective "on demand" sequencing of small numbers of bacterial isolates. The analysis of Nanopore sequencing data, however, can be challenging. We present NanoCore, a user-friendly software for genomic surveillance that works directly based on Nanopore sequencing reads in FASTQ format, and demonstrate that its accuracy is equivalent to traditional gold standard short read-based analyses.