Deep sequencing: Technical advances and clinical microbiology applications

Abstract

The ability to generate sequence information for millions of DNA fragments in a short time cheaply by next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies has enabled numerous projects covering diverse application areas that include de novo sequencing, genome resequencing, transcriptome sequencing, chip-sequencing, and exome sequencing. Several sequencing platforms are available in the market and many more are being developed at various stages [1]. Among them, the Roche/454 Genome Sequencer (GS) has the ability to sequence 400-600 million base pairs per run with 400-500 bp read lengths, and the Illumina HiSeq 2000 (HiSeq in brief) has the capacity to generate up to 200 billion base pair per run with 100 bp read lengths. The long reads by the GS and the high yield by the HiSeq make these two platforms stand out among various NGS techniques in the current NGS market.