We’re pleased to release a short video describing PacBio Sequencing and our latest platform, the Sequel II System. If you’ve ever wondered how Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing works, what the Sequel II System is, and what applications are available, this video is a great place to start. We are excited to share the capabilities of our Sequel II System as it makes SMRT Sequencing affordable for scientists in any lab and provides comprehensive views of genomes, transcriptomes, or epigenomes. The Sequel II System also produces highly accurate long reads, known as HiFi reads, to deliver the highest quality sequencing…
A recent publication from scientists at the University of Florida and the University of Missouri used SMRT Sequencing to analyze epigenomic changes that occur when free-living bacteria associate with a host and become symbiotic instead. Published in the Frontiers in Microbiology journal, “Integrating DNA Methylation and Gene Expression Data in the Development of the Soybean-Bradyrhizobium N2-Fixing Symbiosis” comes from a team of collaborators including lead author Austin Davis-Richardson and senior author Eric Triplett. The scientists aimed to assess the role of epigenetics in bacterial evolution from free-living to symbiont and chose SMRT Sequencing because it generates base-specific modification information as it…
Richard Roberts, Nobel Laureate and Chief Scientific Officer of New England Biolabs, offers his thoughts on the utility of methylation data for understanding prokaryotes. In his words: “Please run SMRT Analysis to detect methylation in your prokaryotic PacBio data. Most bacteria and archaea encode DNA methylases, many of which are known components of restriction-modification systems. Usually, these are quite specific in terms of the sequences they recognize; the restriction component becomes a key defense mechanism preventing phages, plasmids, and other DNA elements from infecting the cell. Until recently, it was quite difficult to determine the recognition sequences of these methylases.…