Commercial high-throughput sequencing and its applications in DNA analysis

DNA sequences can be used for the analysis of genetic variation and gene function. The high-throughput sequencing techniques that have been developed over the past three years can read as many as one billion bases per run, and are far less expensive than the traditional Sanger sequencing method. Therefore, the high-throughput sequencing has been applied extensively to genomic analyses, such as screening for mutations, construction of genomic methylation maps, and the study of DNA-protein interactions. Although they have only been available for a short period, high-throughput sequencing techniques are profoundly affecting many of the life sciences, and are opening out new potential avenues of research. With the highly-developed commercial high-throughput sequencing platforms, each laboratory has the opportunity to explore this research field. Therefore, in this paper, we have focused on commercially-popular high-throughput sequencing techniques and the ways in which they have been applied over the past three years.