Obtaining microbial genomes with the highest accuracy and contiguity is extremely important when exploring the functional impact of genetic and epigenetic variants on a genome-wide scale. A comprehensive view of the bacterial genome, including genes, regulatory regions, IS elements, phage integration sites, and base modifications is vital to understanding key traits such as antibiotic resistance, virulence, and metabolism. SMRT Sequencing provides complete genomes, often assembled into a single contig. Our streamlined microbial multiplexing procedure for the Sequel System, from library preparation to genome assembly, can be completed with less than 8 hours bench time. Starting with high-quality genomic DNA (gDNA),…
Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing on the Sequel II System enables easy and affordable generation of high-quality de novo assemblies. With megabase size contig N50s, accuracies >99.99%, and phased haplotypes, you can do more biology – capturing undetected SNVs, fully intact genes, and regulatory elements embedded in complex regions.
In his AGBT talk, Matthew Blow from the Joint Genome Institute describes high-throughput pipelines to annotate gene function and explore methylation in microbes. He uses transposon sequencing to annotate thousands of genes in bacteria and archaea. Later, he presents a study using SMRT Sequencing to generate complete methylomes for 232 prokaryotes, showing that orphan methylases appear to have a regulatory role.
Marc Salit is the leader of the Genome Scale Measurement Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST. In this Mendelspod podcast, he explains how NIST played a pivotal, foundational role in enabling the ‘Century of Physics.’ Now Marc and NIST are looking for the right set of standards to enable the already-upon-us “Century of Biology.” The human reference genome is an example of a standard that Marc and his team are developing. Currently they are piloting what they call “Genome in a Bottle,” a physical reference standard to which all other human genomes can be measured.…
Michael Schatz of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Johns Hopkins University discusses the challenges in detecting structural variations (SVs) in high throughput sequencing data, especially more complex SVs such as a duplication nested within an inversion. To overcome these challenges, Dr. Schatz and his team have been applying long-read sequencing to analyze SVs in a range of samples from small microbial genomes, through mid-sized plant and animal genomes, to large mammalian genomes. The increased read lengths, which currently average over 10kbp and some approach 100kbp, make it possible to span more complex SVs and accurately assess SVs in repetitive regions,…
Michael Lutz, from the Duke University Medical Center, discussed a recently published software tool that can now be used in a pipeline with SMRT Sequencing data to find structural variant biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases with a focus on Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, and Lewy body dementia. His team is particularly interested in short sequence repeats and short tandem repeats, which have already been implicated in neurodegenerative disease.
Jonas Korlach spoke about recent SMRT Sequencing updates, such as latest Sequel System chemistry release (1.2.1) and updates to the Integrative Genomics Viewer that’s now update optimized for PacBio data. He presented the recent data release of structural variation detected in the NA12878 genome, including many more insertions and deletions than short-read-based technologies were able to find.
At AGBT 2017, Lars Paulin from the University of Helsinki presented this poster on whole genome sequencing of the virus responsible for progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, a rare and dangerous brain infection. His team used long amplicon analysis to resolve the whole virus genome from three patient samples, pooled them for SMRT Sequencing, and identified variants and rearrangements. This work represents the first time the viral genome was sequenced from patients.
In this Webinar, we will give an introduction to Pacific Biosciences’ single molecule, real-time (SMRT) sequencing. After showing how the system works, we will discuss the main features of the technology with an emphasis on the difference between systematic error and random error and how SMRT sequencing produces better consensus accuracy than other systems. Following this, we will discuss several ground-breaking discoveries in medical science that were made possible by the longs reads and high accuracy of SMRT Sequencing.
At AGBT 2017, Mike Schatz from Johns Hopkins University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory presented data from sequencing, assembling, and analyzing personalized, phased diploid genomes with either Illumina, 10x Genomics, and PacBio SMRT Sequencing. Compared to the short-read-based methods, PacBio data assembled in large, complete contigs and contained the broadest range of structural variants with the best resolution. Plus: unexpected translocation findings with SMRT Sequencing, validated in follow-up studies.
Structural variants (SVs, differences >50 base pairs) account for most of the base pairs that differ between two human genomes, and are known to cause over 1,000 genetic disorders including ALS, schizophrenia, and hereditary cancer. Yet, SVs remain overlooked in human genetic research studies due to the limited power of short-read sequencing methods (exome and whole genome sequencing) to resolve large variants, which often involve repetitive DNA. Recent advances in long-read sequencing have made it possible to detect the over 20,000 SVs that are now known to exist in a human genome. Corresponding advances in long-read SV calling algorithms have…
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…
In this PacBio User Group Meeting presentation, PacBio scientist Kristin Mars speaks about recent updates, such as the single-day library prep that’s now possible with the Iso-Seq Express workflow. She also notes that one SMRT Cell 8M is sufficient for most Iso-Seq experiments for whole transcriptome sequencing at an affordable price.
Dr. Wenger gives attendees an update on PacBio’s long-read sequencing and variant detection capabilities on the Sequel II System and shares recommendations on how to design your own study using HiFi reads. Then, Dr. Sund from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center describes how she has used long-read sequencing to solve rare neurological diseases involving complex structural rearrangements that were previously unsolved with standard methods.
During the past decade, the search for pathogenic mutations in rare human genetic diseases has involved huge efforts to sequence coding regions, or the entire genome, using massively parallel short-read sequencers. However, the approximate current diagnostic rate is