Sequence assembly is the process of matching reads that correspond to the same genomic region, to form larger contiguous sequence units.

Sequence assembly is most commonly used in the context of genome or transcriptome assembly.

There are a number of tools available for performing read assembly. For example, gDNA assembly can be achieved using tools such as Flye or Shasta.

Recommended best practices may vary depending on the species’ genome that you are trying to assemble, and we would recommend you read the assembly section of the Applications page to identify the current recommended best practices.

Once an initial draft assembly has been performed, you will typically need to polish the draft assembly. Sequencing polishing (also known as consensus improvement) is the process of improving the initial assembly to improve local base pair accuracy and increase overall assembly quality.

For recommended best practices, please see our Applications section or the relevant EPI2ME Labs assembly workflows.