The Inter-European Union Reference Laboratories (EURLs) Working Group (WG) has been established by the European Commission with the aim to promote the use of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) across the EURLs' networks, build NGS capacity within the EU European union  and ensure liaison with the work of the EURLs and the work of EFSA and ECDC on the NGS mandate sent by the Commission. The WG includes all the EURLs operating in the field of the microbiological contamination of food and feed and is coordinated by the EURL for E. coli.

The documents are meant to provide guidance to the laboratories in the area of application of NGS and have been produced by the working group with the aim of being diffused to all the networks of NRLs National Reference Laboratories. These documents are agregated in the Zenodo community InterBiorisks-EURLs working group on NGS: https://zenodo.org/communities/eurls-biorisks_wg_on_ngs.

Links to these documents at the respective curators' websites will be added below as soon as the documents become available:

• Overview of conducted and planned PTs (v2 - 04/09/2023) – curated by EURL-Antimicrobial Resistance
• Webinar on PTs on NGS: approaches in use at EURLs (29/09/2023) - presentations available EURL-E. coli
• Reference Whole Genome Sequencing collection  (v2 - 06/03/2023) – curated by EURL-Salmonella
• NGS laboratory procedures (v1 - 22/03/2021) – curated by EURL-Parasites
•  NEW  Bioinformatics tools for basic analysis of Next Generation Sequencing data  (v3 - 10/01/2024) – curated by EURL-E. coli
• Guidance document for cluster analysis of whole genome sequence data  – curated by EURL-Campylobacter
• Guidance document for NGS-Benchmarking  – curated by EURL-Listeria monocytogenes
•  NEW  Inventory of training supports (v4 - 16/01/2024) – curated by EURL-Coagulase-Positive Staphylococci
• Survey on the use of NGS across the NRLs networks – curated by EURL-E. coli
• Supporting document for preparing high quality DNA for Whole Genome Sequencing (v1 - 23/12/2022) – curated by EURL-E. coli

"Science meets Policy" conferences:

• 2023: EFSA with the inter-EURL working group on Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) organised the “Science Meets Policy” conference on “EU initiatives towards the large-scale use of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to tackle foodborne threats” (online and in Parma), held on 5-6 September 2023.  Presentations now available  
• 2020: The inter-EURLs WG on NGS organised a "Science meets Policy" conference entitled "Modern technologies to enable response to crises. Next Generation Sequencing to tackle food-borne diseases", held on 25 September 2020. -> Presentations available on EURL for E. coli website.

Paper:

 NEW  A short communication writen to illustrate the results of the first 5 years of activity - > European Union Reference Laboratories support the National food, feed and veterinary Reference Laboratories with rolling out whole genome sequencing in Europe | Microbial Genomics