News
Next-Generation Sequencing and its application in health care
10 Jun 2020
Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) is an advanced application for basically nucleotide sequencing i.e. DNA and RNA sequencing and also substitution or mutation detection. NGS technology combines the advantages of specific sequencing chemistries, different sequencing matrices, and bioinformatics technology.
This types of combination allow a massively parallel sequencing of various lengths of DNA or RNA sequences or even whole-genome within a relatively very short time. After the Sanger sequencing method, NGS is a revolutionary sequencing technology. It involves several major steps in sequencing, for example, DNA fragmentation, library preparation, massively parallel sequencing, bioinformatics analysis, and variant annotation and interpretation. Nowadays, major application of NGS is in the clinical domain.
So, the main preference of NGS is to interrogate many targets area at the corresponding time on the scale of hundreds and thousands or even millions of targets. It gives NGS a large potential application in clinical settings. The first step is to find what genetic mutations need to be interrogated. NGS can be performed at different levels. It can be used for whole-genome sequencing. Almost all the nucleotides in the genome, including chromosomal DNA and the mitochondrial DNA, are interrogated at this level.
Its clinical application is not only to diagnose. NGS is also widely used in identifying mutation targets for targeting therapy and in identifying a high-risk population for certain hereditary cancers etc. We can conclude that the sequence variants/mutations detected by NGS will be widely used for disease diagnosis, prognosis, therapeutic decision, and follow up of patients, etc. The function of its massive parallel sequencing offers new possibilities for personalized exactness medicine. So, there is no confusion that NGS examination/testing is a strong and turning technology that offers an extraordinary contribution to personalized and precision medicine in the health care approaching sector for individual life.
Vivek Srivastava
Department of Biotechnology
Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
Rama University Uttar Pradesh, Kanpur
Email: drviveksrivastava.fet@ramauniversity.ac.in