Widening participation would be key in enhancing bioinformatics and genomics research in Africa

Karikari, Thomas K.; Quansah, Emmanuel; Mohamed, Wael M.Y.

Empowering rural institutions for BGS research would have many potential advantages such as helping to improve (i) disease diagnosis, characterisation and treatment (ii) swift responses to public health emergencies (iii) studies into neglected tropical diseases (iv) food security through the use of genomics tools to increase crop yield, and (v) biology and health education (Karikari, 2015a; Worku et al., 2005) . BGS approaches such as genome-wide association studies and next generation sequencing (NGS) have been used in clinical applications such as cancer treatment selection based on molecular tumour characterisation (Ong et al., 2012) and real-time monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks (Anderson et al., 2014) . In the area of infectious diseases, genome sequencing approaches have been instrumental to control outbreaks in tuberculosis, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), cholera, H1N1 influenza, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MERS), carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae and EVD (Anderson et al., 2014; Chin et al., 2011; Gardy et al., 2011; Gire et al., 2014; Marra et al., 2003; Ong et al., 2012; Smith et al., 2009; Snitkin et al., 2012) . For instance, sequencing of the genome of microorganism isolates from affected patients enabled scientists to identify the coronavirus causative agent in the 2003 SARS outbreak (Marra et al., 2003) . Also, the fact that the genomes of disease-causing microorganisms can be sequenced within a short timeframe makes sequencing technologies important tools in clinical disease surveillance and control (McCarthy et al., 2013 ). An example is the recent application of whole genome sequencing to identify and analyse the source of MERS infection in an American football team (Anderson et al., 2014) . This timely use of NGS tools helped to avoid a large-scale disease outbreak.