A metagenome is the collection of microbial genes and genomes in a clinical or environmental microbiome sample.  Microbiome samples are complex and their contained genomes, which vary in abundance but overlap in composition, are particularly challenging to assemble.  Current mainstream NGS platforms such as Illumina short reads lack the necessary read length for accurate de novo assembly of metagenomes. On the other hand, current commercially available long-read sequencing platforms are either too inaccurate for strain level variation or have too low throughput, and therefore are not able to satisfy the needs of many metagenomic studies.   

TELL-Seq™ Linked Read is emerging as the ideal solution for metagenomic/microbiome studies.   TELL-Seq™ can identify species more accurately than short reads alone with far fewer false positives and more accurate abundance estimation.  TELL-Seq™ can also generate high-quality MAGs (metagenome-assembled genomes) better than some long-read platforms (Benchmarking genome assembly methods on metagenomic sequencing data (2023).   TELL-Seq™ library prep is easy to scale up and automate, offering 8, 24, 96 and 384 sample indices to allow pooling of hundreds or thousands of samples to sequence on high-throughput low-cost NGS sequencers, such as Illumina NextSeq2000, NovaSeq6000 and NovaSeq X as well as Element Bio Aviti, etc.