Paul Coupland and his team at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have developed a sequencing method on the PacBio System for small DNA molecules that avoids the need for a standard library preparation. To date this approach has been applied toward sequencing single-stranded and double-stranded viral genomes, bacterial plasmids, plasmid vector models for DNA-modification analysis, and linear DNA fragments covering an entire bacterial genome. Using direct sequencing it is possible to generate sequence data from as little as 1 ng of DNA, offering a significant advantage over current protocols which typically require 400–500 ng of sheared DNA for the library…
With the introduction of P6-C4 chemistry, PacBio has made significant strides with Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing . Read lengths averaging between 10 and 15 kb can be now be achieved with extreme reads in the distribution of > 60 kb. The chemistry attains a consensus accuracy of 99.999% (QV50) at 30x coverage which coupled with an increased throughput from the PacBio RS II platform (500 Mb – 1 Gb per SMRT Cell) makes larger genome projects more tractable. These combined advancements in technology deliver results that rival the quality of Sanger “clone-by-clone” sequencing efforts; resulting in closed microbial genomes…
Advances in RNA sequencing have accelerated our understanding of the transcriptome, however isoform discovery remains challenging due to short read lengths. The Iso-Seq Application provides a new alternative to sequence full-length cDNA libraries using long reads from the PacBio RS II. Identification of long and often rare isoforms is demonstrated with rat heart and lung RNA prepared using the Clontech® SMARTer® cDNA preparation kit, followed by agarose-gel size selection in fractions of 1-2 kb, 2-3 kb and 3-6 kb. For each tissue, 1.8 and 1.2 million reads were obtained from 32 and 26 SMRT Cells, respectively. Filtering for reads with…
Microbial genome sequencing can be done quickly, easily, and efficiently with the PacBio sequencing instruments, resulting in complete de novo assemblies. Alternative protocols have been developed to reduce the amount of purified DNA required for SMRT Sequencing, to broaden applicability to lower-abundance samples. If 50-100 ng of microbial DNA is available, a 10-20 kb SMRTbell library can be made. A 2 kb SMRTbell library only requires a few ng of gDNA when carrier DNA is added to the library. The resulting libraries can be loaded onto multiple SMRT Cells, yielding more than enough data for complete assembly of microbial genomes…
There are many sequencing-based approaches to understanding complex metagenomic communities spanning targeted amplification to whole-sample shotgun sequencing. While targeted approaches provide valuable data at low sequencing depth, they are limited by primer design and PCR amplification. Whole-sample shotgun experiments generally use short-read, second-generation sequencing, which results in data processing difficulties. For example, reads less than 1 kb in length will likely not cover a complete gene or region of interest, and will require assembly. This not only introduces the possibility of incorrectly combining sequence from different community members, it requires a high depth of coverage. As such, rare community members…
We have developed barcoding reagents and workflows for multiplexing amplicons or fragmented native genomic (DNA) prior to Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing. The long reads of PacBio’s SMRT Sequencing enable detection of linked mutations across multiple kilobases (kb) of sequence. This feature is particularly useful in the context of mutational analysis or SNP confirmation, where a large number of samples are generated routinely. To validate this workflow, a set of 384 1.7-kb amplicons, each derived from variants of the Phi29 DNA polymerase gene, were barcoded during amplification, pooled, and sequenced on a single SMRT Cell. To demonstrate the applicability of…