Next Generation Sequencing and Bioinformatics

Abstract

With the ongoing development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms and advancements in the latest bioinformatics tools at an unprecedented pace, the ultimate goal of sequencing the human genome for less than $1,000 can be feasible in the near future. The rapid technological advances in NGS have brought about increasing demands for statistical methods and bioinformatics tools for the analysis and management of NGS data. Even in the early stages of the commercial availability of NGS platforms, a large number of applications or tools already existed for analyzing, interpreting, and visualizing NGS data. However, the availability of this plethora of NGS data presents a significant challenge for storage, analyses, and data management. Intrinsically, the analysis of NGS data includes the alignment of sequence reads to a reference, base-calling, and/or polymorphism detection, de novo assembly from paired or unpaired reads, structural variant detection, and genome browsing. While the NGS technologies have allowed a massive increase in available raw sequence data, a number of new informatics challenges and difficulties must be addressed to improve the current state and fulfill the promise of genome research. This review aims to provide an overview of major NGS technologies and bioinformatics tools for NGS data analyses.