Next Generation Sequencing

I once had the pleasure of visiting David Lambert, an expert and pioneer in ancient DNA studies. With Dave I had some of the most interesting and thought provoking discussion about biology, that I have ever had.

Now Dave and his colleagues have a new review out in TREE on New developments in ancient genomics that I can’t wait to read when I get back to work next week.

Here is the abstract:

Ancient DNA research is on the crest of a ‘third wave’ of progress due to the introduction of a new generation of DNA sequencing technologies. Here we review the advantages and disadvantages of the four new DNA sequencers that are becoming available to researchers. These machines now allow the recovery of orders of magnitude more DNA sequence data, albeit as short sequence reads. Hence, the potential reassembly of complete ancient genomes seems imminent, and when used to screen libraries of ancient sequences, these methods are cost effective. This new wealth of data is also likely to herald investigations into the functional properties of extinct genes and gene complexes and will improve our understanding of the biological basis of extinct phenotypes.