Maize is an amazingly diverse crop. A study in 20051 demonstrated that half of the genome sequence and one-third of the gene content between two inbred lines of maize were not shared. This diversity, which is more than two orders of magnitude larger than the diversity found between humans and chimpanzees, highlights the inability of a single reference genome to represent the full pan-genome of maize and all its variants. Here we present and review several efforts to characterize the complete diversity within maize using the highly accurate long reads of PacBio Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing. These methods provide…
Incomplete annotation of genomes represents a major impediment to understanding biological processes, functional differences between species, and evolutionary mechanisms. Often, genes that are large, embedded within duplicated genomic regions, or associated with repeats are difficult to study by short-read expression profiling and assembly. In addition, most genes in eukaryotic organisms produce alternatively spliced isoforms, broadening the diversity of proteins encoded by the genome, which are difficult to resolve with short-read methods. Short-read RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) works by physically shearing transcript isoforms into smaller pieces and bioinformatically reassembling them, leaving opportunity for misassembly or incomplete capture of the full diversity of…
SMRT-Cappable-seq combines the isolation of full-length prokaryotic primary transcripts with long read sequencing technology. It is the first experimental methodology to sequence entire prokaryotic transcripts. It identifies the transcription start site and termination site, thereby directly defines the operon structures genome-wide in prokaryotes. Applied to E.coli, SMRT-Cappable-seq identifies a total of ~2300 operons, among which ~900 are novel. Importantly, our result reveals a pervasive read-through of previous experimentally validated transcription termination sites. Termination read-through represents a powerful strategy to control gene expression. Taken together this data provides a first glance at the complexity of the ‘operome’ in bacteria and presents…
The characterization of gene expression profiles via transcriptome sequencing has proven to be an important tool for characterizing how genomic rearrangements in cancer affect the biological pathways involved in cancer progression and treatment response. More recently, better resolution of transcript isoforms has shown that this additional level of information may be useful in stratifying patients into cancer subtypes with different outcomes and responses to treatment.1 The Iso-Seq protocol developed at PacBio is uniquely able to deliver full-length, high-quality cDNA sequences, allowing the unambiguous determination of splice variants, identifying potential biomarkers and yielding new insights into gene fusion events. Recent improvements…
Oncogenic fusion of IGH-DUX4 has recently been reported as a hallmark that defines a B-ALL subtype present in up to 7% of adolescents and young adults B-ALL. The translocation of DUX4 into IGH results in aberrant activation of DUX4 by hijacking the intronic IGH enhancer (Eµ). How IGH-DUX4 translocation interplays with IGH allelic exclusion was never been explored. We investigated this in Nalm6 B-ALL cell line, using long-read (PacBio Iso-Seq method and 10X Chromium WGS), short-read (Illumina total stranded RNA and WGS), epigenome (H3K27ac ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq) and 3-D genome (Hi-C, H3K27ac HiChIP, Capture-C).
An important need in analyzing complex genomes is the ability to separate and phase haplotypes. While whole genome assembly can deliver this information, it cannot reveal whether there is allele-specific gene or isoform expression. The PacBio Iso-Seq method, which can produce high-quality transcript sequences of 10 kb and longer, has been used to annotate many important plant and animal genomes. We present an algorithm called IsoPhase that post-processes Iso-Seq data for transcript-based haplotyping. We applied IsoPhase to a maize Iso-Seq dataset consisting of two homozygous parents and two F1 cross hybrids. We validated the majority of the SNPs called with…
The PacBio Iso-Seq method produces high-quality, full-length transcripts of up to 10 kb and longer and has been used to annotate many important plant and animal genomes. Here we describe an improved, simplified library workflow and analysis pipeline that reduces library preparation time, RNA input, and cost. The Iso-Seq V2 Express workflow is a one day protocol that requires only ~300 ng of total RNA input while also reducing the number of reverse transcription and amplification steps down to single reactions. Compared with the previous workflow, the Iso-Seq V2 Express workflow increases the percentage of full-length (FL) reads while achieving…
Transcriptome sequencing has proven to be an important tool for understanding the biological changes in cancer genomes including the consequences of structural rearrangements. Short read sequencing has been the method of choice, as the high throughput at low cost allows for transcript quantitation and the detection of even rare transcripts. However, the reads are generally too short to reconstruct complete isoforms. Conversely, long-read approaches can provide unambiguous full-length isoforms, but lower throughput has complicated quantitation and high RNA input requirements has made working with cancer samples challenging. Recently, the COLO 829 cell line was sequenced to 50-fold coverage with PacBio…
Single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) is an emerging field for characterizing cell heterogeneity in complex tissues. However, most scRNA-seq methodologies are limited to gene count information due to short read lengths. Here, we combine the microfluidics scRNA-seq technique, Drop-Seq, with PacBio Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing to generate full-length transcript isoforms that can be confidently assigned to individual cells. We generated single cell Iso-Seq (scIso-Seq) libraries for chimp and human cerebral organoid samples on the Dolomite Nadia platform and sequenced each library with two SMRT Cells 8M on the PacBio Sequel II System. We developed a bioinformatics pipeline to identify, classify,…
The PacBio Iso-Seq method produces high-quality, full-length transcripts and can characterize a whole transcriptome with a single SMRT Cell 8M. We sequenced an Alzheimer whole brain sample on a single SMRT Cell 8M on the Sequel II System. Using the Iso-Seq bioinformatics pipeline followed by SQANTI2 analysis, we detected 162,290 transcripts for 17,670 genes up to 14 kb in length. More than 60% of the transcripts are novel isoforms, the vast majority of which have supporting cage peak data and polyadenylation signals, demonstrating the utility of long-read sequencing for human disease research.
Discover the benefits of HiFi reads and learn how highly accurate long-read sequencing provides a single technology solution across a range of applications.
Learn how Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing and the Sequel IIe System and will accelerate your research by delivering highly accurate long reads to provide the most comprehensive view of genomes, transcriptomes and epigenomes.
Long-read sequencing technologies like Iso-Seq analysis present researchers with a powerful tool for probing the transcriptomes of many species. The ability to sequence transcripts from end-to-end has revealed transcription complexity on a scale that was previously impossible. This sequence rich information has also improved our ability to predict transcript functions and biotypes. Researchers can now use Iso-Seq analysis to discover transcript models in almost any species with an accuracy on par with human and mouse annotations. In this webinar, Richard Kuo discusses the core concepts behind Iso-Seq analysis and how to use it to improve or build a new transcriptome…
The Iso-Seq method enables the sequencing of transcript isoforms from the 5’ end to their poly-A tails, eliminating the need for transcript reconstruction and inference. This webinar provides a comprehensive guide to Iso-Seq method data analysis, bioinformatics, and review key applications.
In this ASHG workshop presentation, Elizabeth Tseng of PacBio showed how the Iso-Seq method can be used to discover disease-associated alternative splicing. Because this approach to isoform sequencing yields accurate, full-length transcripts requiring no assembly, it’s ideal for disease studies that need a more comprehensive picture of alternative splicing activity. Tseng offered several published examples of how the Iso-Seq method has been used for everything from single-gene studies to whole-transcriptome studies, and also detailed how the latest Sequel System chemistry recovers more genes and produces more usable reads.