ASHG PacBio Workshop: PacBio applications updates & future roadmap

In this ASHG 2017 presentation, Jonas Korlach, the CSO of PacBio shared updates on three applications featuring SMRT Sequencing on the Sequel System, highlighting structural variant detection, targeted sequencing and the Iso-Seq method of RNA sequencing. He provided details on structural variant calling using pbsv to call insertions and deletions and compared PacBio variant calling with other technologies. Korlach described how targeted sequencing can be used to interrogate repeat expansions, detect and phase minor variants and can access medically relevant but previously inaccessible gene targets. He presented research featuring the Iso-Seq method that identified isoforms, corrected previous isoform annotations and expanded knowledge of the number of long noncoding RNAs in the human genome. Korlach concluded with a roadmap of the future of SMRT Sequencing including analysis and performance improvements for the Sequel System.