What is a Pangenome? A pangenome identifies which portions of the genome are unique and which overlap and are therefore core to the species. Unless you have an identical twin, no other person has a genome that is identical to yours. The same is true for other animal, plant, and microbial species that reproduce sexually: the genomes of individuals are unique. Less well known, but equally true, is that individual members of a species do not always share even the exact same genes. Nevertheless, scientists mostly use a single reference genome to represent an entire species: one human genome, one…
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a sudden urgency to virus research and led many of us to dig more deeply into all the tools available for characterizing viral genomes, from RT-PCR to DNA sequencing. For all their outsized impact on human health, viruses have remarkably small and simple genomes, some just a few thousand bases in length, and most lacking any repetitive structures. With such tidy genomes, you may wonder, why would scientists want to sequence them with a long-read technology like PacBio HiFi reads? Quasispecies develop as variants are introduced to the viral genome through mutations. While it is…
Welcome to the Sequencing 101 blog series – where we will provide introductions to sequencing technology, genomics, and much more! If you’re not immersed in the field of DNA sequencing, it can be challenging to keep up with the rapid evolution among all the platforms and technologies on the market. Let’s start with a quick overview of how these different technologies came about — and how each is used today. The evolution of sequencing technology. First Generation Sequencing – Starting the Era of Genomics The process of Sanger sequencing. DNA sequencing as we know it originated in the late…