Blog Series: WoG, Cesky Krumlov; Day 2: So you want a NGS Sequencer eh?

Dr. Konrad Paszkiewicz
University of Exeter
Director of Wellcome Trust Biomedical Bioinformatics Hub

Topic: DNA Sequencing Technology: Past, present, future

Good morning bioinformatic campers! Well, afternoon for me, but morning for many of you back in the U.S.

So much of what was covered this morning is going to be redundant with the DNA sequencing preparation blog I wrote previously. So between this entry and that other one you will hopefully get a complete view of the 'state of the union' where sequencing is concerned and prospects for the future. The nice thing is that Konrad tossed in a lot of pro/con lists for different platforms, so those of you considering NGS in the future, this is a bare bones, get you started guide as to what's out there and whether 'it's worth it' for your own research to invest in a platform and which one to invest in. Again, I still highly recommend Dr. Elaine Mardis' talk that I linked in my DNA sequencing technology prep blog.

First and foremost, if you are familiar with what molecular biology is and what sequencing is and don't know who Fred Sanger is...then you've probably been living in a hole...