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Updated: May 27, 2026

Targeted Next-generation Sequencing and Bioinformatics Pipeline to Evaluate Genetic Determinants of Constitutional Disease
Published on: April 4, 2018
Repetitive DNA and next-generation sequencing: computational challenges and solutions
Todd J Treangen1, Steven L Salzberg
1McKusick-Nathans Institute for Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA.
Abstract:
Repetitive DNA sequences are abundant in a broad range of species, from bacteria to mammals, and they cover nearly half of the human genome. Repeats have always presented technical challenges for sequence alignment and assembly programs. Next-generation sequencing projects, with their short read lengths and high data volumes, have made these challenges more difficult. From a computational perspective, repeats create ambiguities in alignment and assembly, which, in turn, can produce biases and errors when interpreting results. Simply ignoring repeats is not an option, as this creates problems of its own and may mean that important biological phenomena are missed. We discuss the computational problems surrounding repeats and describe strategies used by current bioinformatics systems to solve them.
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