High-Throughput Yeast Strain Sequencing

The original yeast genome sequencing project was a monumental task, spanning several years, which resulted in the first sequenced eukaryotic genome. The 12 Mbp reference sequence was generated from yeast strain S288c and was of extremely high quality. In the years since it was published, sequencing technology has advanced apace, such that it is within the reach of most labs to sequence yeast strains of interest almost as a matter of standard practice, either via core facilities at their institution or through commercial sequencing services. Because of the availability of the high-quality reference sequence (which itself has received approximately 1500 updates derived from high-throughput sequencing data), reliable identification of differences between a strain of interest and the reference is relatively straightforward, at least for the nonrepetitive regions of the genome. In this introduction, we describe current high-throughput sequencing technology and methods for analysis of the resulting data.