Next Generation Sequencing

Researchers from Helicos and the universities of Stanford and Ohio have published a genome re-sequencing proof-of-concept paper in the journal Science. The team reports a 100 percent coverage of the 6,407 nucleotide genome which was sequenced with more than 150-fold coverage. Read lengths averaged about 23 bases. A point of interest is that the error rate of the sequencing was quite high, especially in homopolymer regions. However, Helicos reports that a new generation of nucleotides has since been developed that give more accurate homopolymer sequencing, and lower overall error rates. GenomeWeb has more. I have to go get hold of the original paper and read it before I blog on.

Here is the original press release.