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Approaching complete genomes, transcriptomes and epi-omes with accurate long-read sequencing

The year 2022 will be remembered as the turning point for accurate long-read sequencing, which now establishes the gold standard for speed and accuracy at competitive costs. We discuss the key bioinformatics techniques needed to power long reads across application areas and close with our vision for long-read sequencing over the coming years.

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Fig. 1: Long-read sequencing methods and applications.
Fig. 2: Improvement of sequencing technologies.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all past and current members of the Schatz lab, as well as our long-read collaborators, especially Timour Baslan, Andrew Carroll, Jason Chin, Megan Dennis, Evan Eichler, Tom Gingeras, Mark Gerstein, Sara Goodwin, Ian Henderson, Candice Hirsch, Matthew Hufford, Alison Klein, Ben Langmead, Zach Lippman, Erich Jarvis, W. Richard McCombie, Rajiv McCoy, Karen Miga, Rachel O’Neill, Mihaela Pertea, Adam Phillippy, Fritz Sedlazeck, Steven Salzberg, Winston Timp, Eli Van Allen, Justin Zook, and many others. Finally, we would also like to thank the researchers at PacBio and Oxford Nanopore for their developments and collaborations. This work was supported in part by the US National Science Foundation (IOS-2216612, IOS-1758800), the US National Institutes of Health (U24HG010263, U41HG006620, U01CA253481), and the Human Frontier Science Program (RGP0025/2021).

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Correspondence to Michael C. Schatz.

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Kovaka, S., Ou, S., Jenike, K.M. et al. Approaching complete genomes, transcriptomes and epi-omes with accurate long-read sequencing. Nat Methods 20, 12–16 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-022-01716-8

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