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The evolution of bacterial genome assemblies - where do we need to go next?

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posted on 2023-05-03, 19:33 authored by Eric Altermann, Halina Tegetmeyer, Ryan Chanyi
Genome sequencing has fundamentally changed our ability to decipher and understand the genetic blueprint of life and how it changes over time in response to environmental and evolutionary pressures. The pace of sequencing is still increasing in response to advances in technologies, paving the way from sequenced genes to genomes to metagenomes to metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). Our ability to interrogate increasingly complex microbial communities through metagenomes and MAGs is opening up a tantalizing future where we may be able to delve deeper into the mechanisms and genetic responses emerging over time. In the near future, we will be able to detect MAG assembly variations within strains originating from diverging sub-populations, and one of the emerging challenges will be to capture these variations in a biologically relevant way. Here, we present a brief overview of sequencing technologies and the current state of metagenome assemblies to suggest the need to develop new data formats that can capture the genetic variations within strains and communities, which previously remained invisible due to sequencing technology limitations.

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Rights statement

© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Language

  • English

Does this contain Māori information or data?

  • No

Publisher

OAE Publishing Inc.

Journal title

Microbiome Research Reports

ISSN

2771-5965

Citation

Altermann, E., Tegetmeyer, H. E., & Chanyi, R. M. (2022). The evolution of bacterial genome assemblies - where do we need to go next? Microbiome Research Reports, 1, 15. https://doi.org/10.20517/mrr.2022.02