I have been reading about the Ultra-long Sequencing Kit from Nanopore to try it this summer. Tonight I found the Ultra-long Reads YouTube playlist from ONT. I watched the session by Jillian Hammond from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia. They presented on the use of Ultra-long Reads for Australian Reptiles. They noted that ultra-long reads help assemble whole repetitive regions and define structural rearrangements. Their first project involved the generation of high-quality genomes from the bearded dragon and shingleback lizard. Hammond explained that they wanted to elucidate and phase the sex chromosomes to better understand sex determination. The second project Hammond described was using ultra-long reads to learn about sea snakes and their genomes. The genes associated with aquatic adaptation are of interest. The methodology used is to extract DNA using the Circulomics and ONT Ultra-long kits. According to Hammond, the protocols use nanobind discs and take about an hour and a half each. For DNA extraction, 20-70 ul of nucleated blood is enough! Hammond shared read lengths and output for the four organisms they sequenced. They are obtaining N50s 0.6 Mb and above! The next steps include additional ultra-long sequencing runs and Illumina data to improve assemblies and cDNA sequencing to help annotate genomes. This session shared some ideas for DNA prep and examples of the use of the ultra-long ONT kit.
