Next Generation Sequencing

Dear Colleagues,

Next generation sequencing (massively parallel sequencing) has revolutionarized our understanding of the DNA code of life. It has accelerated the discovery of rare-disease causing genes, advanced our understanding of complex diseases, provides hope for the future of personalised medicine, while providing a clearer understanding of human population history. NGS sequencing has also advanced the scope of enquiry beyond the human genome to include the transcriptome, epigenome (methylome and chromatin modifications), microbiome, to defining the minimal genome. The ability to generate genome-wide data at relatively low costs has advanced the field of comparative genomics that extends beyond the human genome, while technical advances in application of NGS and analysis is allowing for genome analysis at the level of a single cell. Computational challenges of handling massive amounts of data, dealing with error, data integration, and data interpretation and interrogation are ongoing. Additional challenges include, amongst others, accurate calling of somatic DNA variation due to the heterogenous nature of cancer, de novo assembly of short read sequencing data, accurate detection of large structural variation, genome phasing, technical advances in single cell genomics, and computational challenges associated with metagenomic analysis.

This Special Issue offers an Open Access forum that aims at bringing together a collection of original research and review articles addressing the current advances and limitations of the next generation sequencing era. To that end we are welcoming contributions, which may cover technical and computational advances in NGS, novel applications for NGS (including beyond the human genome to include topics like environmental genomics and advances in ancient DNA research), address NGS limitations, the future of long read and genomic mapping, advances in de novo assembly, and integration and interpretation of different omic data for a complete understanding of cellular function. We hope to provide a stimulating resource that takes a look at how NGS has advanced our knowledge and raised significant questions around the complexity of the genome.

Prof. Dr. Vanessa Hayes
Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cells is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 500 CHF (Swiss Francs). English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.

• analysis pipelines
• data interpretation
• short reads
• long reads
• de novo assembly
• genome phasing
• cancer genomes
• comparative genomics
• Pool-Seq
• genome mapping
• RNA sequencing
• metagenomics
• human microbiome
• minimal genome
• methylome
• genomic organization
• single cell genomics
• environmental genomics