What is Next Generation Sequencing?
Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) is a group of technologies that perform large-scale DNA and RNA sequencing. Also referred to as massively parallel sequencing, this umbrella of technologies provides detailed information of genomic landscapes and provides a depth of data previously unattainable by Sanger sequencing methodology alone.
In 2003, the work of multiple people analyzing billions of nucleotides with capillary sequencers was finally published as the Human Genome Project1. This astounding scientific achievement took years to complete. Using NGS, a single laboratory today could complete this same work within hours. As sequencing became more attainable, applications for NGS continues to grow: personalized medicine, genetic disease research, clinical diagnostics and more. Since NGS methodologies enable hundreds of thousands of genes to be analyzed at one time, data can be collected both quickly and cost effectively, expanding information access in research, biomedical, environmental and forensic sciences.
There are three critical attributes that make the NGS approach breakthrough: speed, throughput and accuracy. As a trusted precision motion expert within optical imaging applications, Dover Motion is proving to be a valuable partner to NGS instrument developers.