Nanopore - Amplicon/16S Sequencing

Amplicon Sequencing selectively amplifies one or more regions of the DNA. This allows processing of many samples at once employing multiplexing protocols, reducing costs significantly compared to whole genome sequencing protocols. However, some information is lost due to amplification, e.g. Methylation data.

A particular application of amplicon sequencing is 16S sequencing for the detection of microbial species from natural populations (microbiome metagenomics). Due to the long read length, the 16S genes can be completely sequenced, whereas short read sequencing techniques only cover certain variable ranges. This results in a significantly higher resolution for species determination.