1. High-throughput sequencing techniques

A reminder of high-throughput sequencing

Sequencing is a chemical process that establishes the order in which the four nucleotides A, T, C and G are strung together in a given DNA strand. Whereas early machines could only sequence 800 bases in five days, today's new sequencers can generate a gigabase (Gb, or 10 ⁹ bases) in just a few hours. This became possible from 2006 onwards, thanks to the convergence of microfluidic techniques, nanotechnologies and advances in bioinformatics. All these devices are called "high-throughput sequencers" or "next-generation sequencers", grouped together under the acronym NGS for "Next Generation Sequencing". With these new massive sequencing technologies, data production capacities have become exponential