1 What is whole genome sequencing and how can it be used for AMR surveillance?

In this course you will be introduced to the fundamental concepts of WGS, including commonly used terminology. If you haven’t done so already, it might be helpful for you to review the course Introducing antimicrobial resistance to make sure that you understand what a genome is and how it is relevant to AMR.

So what is WGS?

It’s a laboratory process that determines the complete deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence of an organism’s genome. It involves extracting the DNA, sequencing it and assembling the sequences into a complete genome using bioinformatic tools. These processes are described in more detail in Section 3 of this course.