Long Read Service

Our Long Read service uses the latest R10.4.1 chemistry from Oxford Nanopore Technologies to provide high quality assemblies of your bacterial genomes.

Long reads - as their name suggests - permit sequencing of much longer fragments of DNA than technologies like Illumina, which is the basis of our Short Read service. We produce short reads that are 250 bp long. Whilst this is a lot longer than many other companies that offer 150 bp reads, it is no match for long reads that can be millions of base pairs long under the right conditions.

This provides a huge advantage when trying to piece those fragments back together in an assembly; when we sequence a genome, we are trying to put a huge puzzle back together. The longer the reads, the bigger the puzzle piece, and the more contextual information is available around the edges of those pieces to guide correct placement.

Service Overview

We charge £85 Ex. VAT for bacterial genomes up to 10 Mb in length, and we guarantee that you will receive 50X coverage of your genome (i.e. on average, each position in the genome is sequenced 50 times) - if we don’t hit that, we’ll sequence it again at no extra charge.

We have low trigger points for volume discounts (Figure 1), meaning Long Read can be purchased for as little as £59.50 Ex VAT per sample.

Our target turnaround time is 4 weeks from sample receipt.

Send Us

Long Read is a bacterial strain only service. All you need to do is grow your bacteria, and place 10⁶ - 10⁹ cells into buffer tubes we provide you, you can see our submission protocol here:

• Strain Submission Protocol

Service Outputs

Your data will be delivered via a secure project portal, which can be shared with collaborators and key stakeholders. Your data will be stored for a minimum of 12 months.

The outputs will include:

• Raw R10.4.1 ONT long reads in .fastq format
  • Allows you to perform your own analysis and upload to public repositories.
• A polished genome assembly in .fasta format
  • Allows you to query your genome for key information, can be used in various downstream analyses.
• Annotations in genbank (.gbk) and .gff formats
  • Allows you to look at the CDS identified in your genome.
• Taxonomic classifications of your reads and assembly
  • Provides 16S and species identification to confirm your sample is pure.

Good applications

Long Read is perfect for people that want a more complete genome (i.e. less contigs), or want to study larger extrachromosomal elements like AMR plasmids, that Short Read alone wouldn’t be able to piece back together.

If you’ve used our Short Read service before, then Long Read will likely be a great fit for your needs.

Bad applications

For certain downstream applications, Short Read might be a better fit. For example, variant calling can benefit from the additional raw read accuracy that our Short Read service offers.

If you need a reference quality genome - that is, the best possible assembly we can produce with current methods - our Hybrid service would be the best option. This uses Long and Short reads in combination to get the best of both worlds.

If you’re just trying to classify a ≤30 Kb plasmid from a cloning experiment, then Long Read will be overkill. Check out our PlasmidSeq service, which costs just £10 Ex. VAT.

If you’re working on a non-bacterial organism, or cannot send us strains, then our Short Read service would be best, as we can accept a wider variety of input organisms, and we can accept DNA submissions for this service.

WGS Overview Get a quote