Next Generation Sequencing

A recently published study by Wommack et al. explores the power of using pyrosequencing data to characterize microbial communities. Short reads here refers to pyrosequencing data, as compared to Sanger sequencing data.

In the abstract the authors conclude that:

..more distant homologs of microbial and viral genes are not detected by short read sequences…. ..Noting the current limitation in computational approaches for analysis of short sequences, use of short read length libraries does not appear to be an appropriate tool for metagenomic characterization of microbial communities.