Ginkgo Bioworks, Texas A&M awarded research grant from USDA APHIS

Ginkgo Bioworks and Texas A&M University announced they have been jointly awarded a research grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service via the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agriculture and Food Research Initiative to study SARS-CoV-2 in white-tailed deer populations in Texas.This research is one of the first at-scale studies that will conduct widespread DNA sequencing of white-tailed deer in Texas. White-tailed deer are a farmed animal species that have historically had high positivity rates of SARS-CoV-2 in wild populations throughout the United States. As part of the study, Ginkgo’s biosecurity and public health unit, Concentric by Ginkgo, and researchers from Texas A&M’s School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences aim to identify if, when, and how both farmed and wild white-tailed deer become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and how this spread of disease can impact other animal species, including humans. Texas A&M will screen both historic and newly collected samples for the presence of the virus, which will then be sequenced and analyzed by Concentric. Results of the research can give the agriculture and livestock industries the data points needed to develop infrastructure in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection in deer and future zoonotic disease outbreaks impacting livestock.