Evaluation of strategies for the assembly of diverse bacterial genomes using MinION long-read sequencing.

Genome assembly using short-reads is challenged by repetitive sequences and extreme GC contents. Our results indicate that these difficulties can be largely overcome by using single-molecule, long-read sequencing technologies such as the Oxford Nanopore MinION. Using MinION reads for assembly followed by polishing with Illumina reads generated the most contiguous genomes with sufficient accuracy to enable the accurate annotation of important but difficult to sequence genomic features such as insertion sequences and secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters. The combination of Oxford Nanopore and Illumina sequencing can therefore cost-effectively advance studies of microbial evolution and genome-driven drug discovery.