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BackgroundWe present the first sequencing data using the combinatorial probe-anchor synthesis (cPAS)-based BGISEQ-500 sequencer. Applying cPAS, we investigated the repertoire of human small non-coding RNAs and compared it to other techniques.ResultsStarting with repeated measurements of different specimens including solid tissues (brain and heart) and blood, we generated a median of 30.1 million reads per sample. 24.1 million mapped to the human genome and 23.3 million to the miRBase. Among six technical replicates of brain samples, we observed a median correlation of 0.98. Comparing BGISEQ-500 to HiSeq, we calculated a correlation of 0.75. The comparability to microarrays was similar for both BGISEQ-500 and HiSeq with the first one showing a correlation of 0.58 and the latter one correlation of 0.6. As for a potential bias in the detected expression distribution in blood cells, 98.6% of HiSeq reads versus 93.1% of BGISEQ-500 reads match to the 10 miRNAs with highest read count. After using miRDeep2 and employing stringent selection criteria for predicting new miRNAs, we detected 74 high-likely candidates in the cPAS sequencing reads prevalent in solid tissues and 36 candidates prevalent in blood.ConclusionsWhile there is apparently no ideal platform for all challenges of miRNome analyses, cPAS shows high technical reproducibility and supplements the hitherto available platforms.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13148-016-0287-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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BackgroundWhole exome sequencing (WES) has been widely used in human genetics research. BGISEQ-500 is a recently established next-generation sequencing platform. However, the performance of BGISEQ-500 on WES is not well studied. In this study, we evaluated the performance of BGISEQ-500 on WES by side-to-side comparison with Hiseq4000, on well-characterized human sample NA12878.ResultsBGISEQ demonstrated similarly high reproducibility as Hiseq for variation detection. Also, the SNVs from BGISEQ data is highly consistent with Hiseq results (concordance 96.5%~ 97%). Variation detection accuracy was subsequently evaluated with data from the genome in a bottle project as the benchmark. Both platforms showed similar sensitivity and precision in SNV detection. While in indel detection, BGISEQ showed slightly higher sensitivity and lower precision. The impact of sequence depth and read length on variation detection accuracy was further analyzed, and showed that variation detection sensitivity still increasing when the sequence depth is larger than 100x, and the impact of read length is minor when using 100x data.ConclusionsThis study suggested that BGISEQ-500 is a qualified sequencing platform for WES.

Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) are the most common form of sequence variation in the human genome. Large-scale studies demand high-throughput SNP genotyping platforms. Here we demonstrate the potential of encoded nanowires for use in a particles-based universal array for high-throughput SNP genotyping. The particles are encoded sub-micron metallic nanorods manufactured by electroplating inert metals such as gold and silver into templates and releasing the resulting striped nanoparticles. The power of this technology is that the particles are intrinsically encoded by virtue of the different reflectivity of adjacent metal stripes, enabling the generation of many thousands of unique encoded substrates. Using SNP found within the cytochrome P450 gene family, and a universal short oligonucleotide ligation strategy, we have demonstrated the simultaneous genotyping of 15 SNP; a format requiring discrimination of 30 encoded nanowires (one per allele). To demonstrate applicability to real-world applications, 160 genotypes were determined from multiplex PCR products from 20 genomic DNA samples.