New paper: Validation of an optimized Oxford Nanopore sequencing workflow versus Illumina for mycobacteria from primary MGIT culture

Most genetic sequencing of Mycobacteria, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has for historical reasons used short-read technology, often from Illumina. Whilst effective and economical, newer long-read technologies, as exemplified by Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT), confer several advantages, notability in terms of batch size and portability.

In this paper we show that the described DNA extraction workflow enables ONT sequencing of Mycobacteria obtained after culturing in a MGIT tube and that there is little difference in the detected species, antibiotic resistances or relatedness between ONT- and Illumina-sequenced replicates.

This is important because it allows samples that have been sequenced using different technologies to both e.g. be added to datasets used to infer which genetic variants are associated with antibiotic resistance.