This online seminar describes new technology capable of generating mate-pair sequencing reads up to 50 kb in length, enabling de novo genome assembly, closure, and finishing on the Illumina or Ion Torrent next-generation sequencing platforms. 

Despite advances in NGS technology, true closure and finishing of genomes or bacterial artificial chromosomes remains extremely difficult. NGS instruments produce gigabases per run, but the short read lengths and small size of sequenced fragments result in gaps, misassembled contigs, collapsed repeats, and missing sequences, leaving these regions to be finished manually, if at all. 

With new long span NGS read technology, however, user-defined 2-8 kb mate-pair or 10-20 kb mate-pair libraries can be produced with bead-based or gel purification protocols, with the potential for up to 100 kb mate-pair libraries in the future. Featured speakers will highlight real-world applications of this technology and the utility of long-span mate-pair libraries for genome closure.