Topic: “WideSeq as a Next Gen Sequencing
Replacement for Sanger Sequencing”

Speaker: Philip SanMiguel, Ph.D., Director
Bindley Bioscience Center, Purdue Genomics Core
Purdue University

WideSeq, a service offered by the Purdue Genomics Core, spans the gap between
small Sanger and large Illumina sequencing tasks. This allows, for example, sequencing of an
entire plasmid construct at an affordable cost. Any double-stranded DNA template up to around
100 kb can generate useful results. Various use cases will be discussed. Sanger sequencing
costs orders of magnitude more per base of sequence generated than Illumina Next Generation
sequencing. But the costs of Illumina sequencing are in units of “runs”, rather than individual
reads or bases. Even the smallest Illumina run generates vastly more sequence than is useful or
cost-effective to deploy against a Sanger-level task. The Purdue Genomics Core gathers samples
submitted to it, constructs Illumina libraries from them to be run on a MiSeq once per two weeks.
Some informatics, like de novo assembly, are performed and the results returned as a web page.