Bart Weimer, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who is leading the 100K Foodborne Pathogen Genome Project, talks about using PacBio sequencing to produce long reads for microbial genomes as well as to study how bacteria use epigenetics to regulate gene expression.
UC Davis’s Bart Weimer describes foodborne pathogens and their proclivity for rapid genome rearrangement. The 100K Pathogen Genome Project he leads is using PacBio long-read sequencing to close genomes and analyze methylation; Weimer reports that his team has already discovered new epigenetic modifications in Salmonella and Listeria with the technology.
Completing a genome is an important goal of genome assembly. However, many assemblies, including reference assemblies, are unfinished and have a number of gaps. Long reads obtained from third-generation sequencing (TGS) platforms can help close these gaps and improve assembly contiguity. However, current gap-closure approaches using long reads require extensive runtime and high memory usage. Thus, a fast and memory-efficient approach using long reads is needed to obtain complete genomes.We developed LR_Gapcloser to rapidly and efficiently close the gaps in genome assembly. This tool utilizes long reads generated from TGS sequencing platforms. Tested on de novo assembled gaps, repeat-derived gaps,…
The newer hierarchical genome assembly process (HGAP) performs de novo assembly using data from a single PacBio long insert library. To assess the benefits of this method, DNA from several Salmonella enterica serovars was isolated from a pure culture. Genome sequencing was performed using Pacific Biosciences RS sequencing technology. The HGAP process enabled us to close sixteen Salmonella subsp. enterica genomes and their associated mobile elements: The ten serotypes include: Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Enteritidis (S. Enteritidis) S. Bareilly, S. Heidelberg, S. Cubana, S. Javiana and S. Typhimurium, S. Newport, S. Montevideo, S. Agona, and S. Tennessee. In addition,…