Large insights into microorganisms…
Microorganisms are the most abundant and diverse forms of life on Earth, with estimates ranging from millions to trillions of species. They are essential components of all ecosystems and play a crucial role in health, disease, and many industrial processes.
The field of microbiology has seen enormous impact from sequencing technologies. Traditionally, microorganisms have been studied through the culturing of individual species or strains using artificial culture media; however, of the ~10 million species so far catalogued, only ~10,000 (0.1%) have been cultured in the laboratory2. The advent of modern sequencing technologies, which allow high-throughput genomic analysis of cultured and, importantly, uncultured microbes, has drastically increased our capability to identify and characterise microorganisms.
Genome sequences for ~490,000 microbial strains are now publicly available3. However, due to the inherent limitations of traditional short-read sequencing technologies, much of what we know about microbial genomes is based on incomplete data. In fact, approximately 90% of bacterial genomes are considered to be incomplete3,4.
This review will explore how microbiologists are now utilising the long-read capabilities of real-time nanopore sequencing to overcome the challenges of short- read sequencing technologies to fully characterise microbial genomes — shedding new light on microbial evolution, pathogenicity, and antimicrobial resistance.
Please check the whitepaper below for details.
