Application of 'next-generation' sequencing technologies to microbial genetics

New sequencing technologies, such as Solexa, 454 pyrosequencing and SOLiD, developed by Illumina, Roche and Applied Biosystems, respectively, are set to revolutionize microbiology by dramatically increasing throughput and reducing costs of DNA sequencing.These new technologies present new technical and computational challenges, as well as new research opportunities.Applications include de novo genome sequence assembly, metagenomics, sRNA discovery, detection of polymorphisms, expression profiling and epigenetics.Many freely available software packages are available for dealing with the large datasets generated by these applications.As well as sequence alignment and assembly, there is a need for downstream processing of data into a form that is accessible to biologists.Standards are emerging for analysis and archiving of data generated by the new technologies.