Tyson Clark, a scientist at PacBio, demonstrates the detection and identification of damaged DNA using SMRT Sequencing. With the platform's ability to see base modifications, Clark notes that the polymerase kinetics can distinguish between different types of DNA damage as well — such as oxidative, radiation, and alkylation. This could help in studies of cancer and aging, where DNA damage is an important factor.
Ellen Paxinos, a scientist at PacBio, shares her AGBT poster on work done in collaboration with reference lab Monogram Biosciences using Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) sequencing to detect minor species and variants in HCV. Using two genotypes mixed together, the team was able to detect variants down to 1% and to identify both viral haplotypes from the data. Paxinos says the study is a model for looking at genomic variation in chronic viral infection.
Adam English, lead bioinformatics programmer at Baylor College of Medicine, discusses challenges with resolving gaps in high-quality draft genome assemblies. Sequencing biases, repetitive genomic features, genomic polymorphism, and other complicating factors all come together to make some regions difficult or impossible to assemble. For more facile assembly and automated finishing of draft genomes, he presents an automated approach to finishing using long reads from the PacBio System. The tool PBJelly automates the finishing process using long sequence reads in a reference-guided assembly process. Using PBJelly and SMRT Sequencing, they upgraded the draft genome sequences of a simulated Drosophila melanogaster, the version…
Penelope Bonnen, an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine, discusses her use of PacBio SMRT sequencing to look at whole mitochondrial genomes as she reviews her AGBT 2012 poster. Dr. Bonnen is studying a Micronesian population with unusually high rates of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease to figure out how mitochondrial genetics contributes to adult-onset metabolic syndrome. She describes two approaches in a pilot project for full-length mitochondrial sequencing: one using a 500-base pair insert library and another directly sequencing the single 17 kb amplicon.
Computational biologist Mauricio Carneiro, PhD, describes a Broad Institute technology comparison to determine how PacBio, Ion Torrent, and Illumina MiSeq perform in discovering and validating human SNPs. Noted PacBio advantages: no bias in GC regions, no systematic errors, and no sequence degradation over increased read length. In a study using samples from the 1,000 Genomes project, PacBio outperformed MiSeq and Ion Torrent in sensitivity and specificity.
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…
PacBio scientist Khai Luong reviews her AGBT poster which was the first example showing SMRT Sequencing could be used to directly detect epigenetic modification in a eukaryotic organism.
PacBio scientist Ellen Paxinos discusses a study presented at AGBT that gnerated single-molecule full genome sequencing of HIV 1 from two pairs of linked transmission from a Zambian cohort. Sequencing was done on full-length amplicons from the virus, and clustering accurately placed the virus from each pair together, distinguishing between the two pairs. Paxinos notes that 50 MB of sequence data was generated in less than four hours.
Jonas Korlach, of PacBio, discusses the use of SMRT sequencing to detect DNA modifications.
Keith Robison, from Warp Drive Bio, discusses his experiences using PacBio for antibiotic drug discovery in GC-rich Streptomyces genomes
Dan Geraghty from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center presents his AGBT poster on a new PacBio-based solution to sequence extended genomic regions — in this case, KIR and MHC, two of the most variable regions of the human genome. He reports data revealing for the first time regions that may be associated with autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis, and also shows that sequences were phased, complete, and highly accurate.
Yuta Suzuki from the University of Tokyo presents his AGBT poster on heterozygotic DNA methylation patterns. He used kinetic data from SMRT Sequencing to generate epigenetic information on samples ranging from human to medaka fish and was able to analyze haplotype-specific methylation data. He also shows that long reads are better able to capture data about CpG islands than short-read sequences.