The first human genome sequencing project cost $2.7 billion and was declared complete in 2003, after 15 years of international cooperation and collaboration between several research teams and funding agencies. Today, with the advent of next-generation sequencing technologies, the cost and time of sequencing a human genome have dropped over 100 fold.
Next-Generation Sequencing Methods
Although all next-generation methods use different technologies, they all share a set of standard features....

When considering a sampled sequence with zero values between sampling instants, one can replace it by taking every N-th value of the sequence. At these integer multiples of N, the original and sampled sequences coincide. This process, known as decimation, involves extracting every N-th sample from a sequence, thereby creating a more efficient sequence.
The Fourier transform of the decimated sequence reveals a combination of scaled and shifted versions of the original spectrum. This...

In the same year as the discovery of the Sanger sequencing method, another group of scientists, Allan Maxam and Walter Gilbert, demonstrated their chemical-cleavage method for DNA sequencing. The Maxam-Gilbert method relies on using different chemicals that can cleave the DNA sequence at specific sites, the separation of resulting DNA fragments of variable size using electrophoresis, and deciphering the DNA sequence from the resulting gel bands.
Challenges of the Maxam-Gilbert Method
The...

The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is a computational algorithm designed to compute the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) efficiently. By breaking down the calculations into smaller, manageable sections, the FFT significantly reduces the computational complexity involved. Direct computation of an N-point DFT requires N2 complex multiplications, whereas the FFT algorithm needs only (N/2)log⁡2N multiplications, offering a much faster performance.
The computational efficiency of the FFT becomes...

RNA sequencing, or RNA-Seq, is a high-throughput sequencing technology used to study the transcriptome of a cell. Transcriptomics helps to interpret the functional elements of a genome and identify the molecular constituents of an organism. Additionally, it also helps in understanding the development of an organism and the occurrence of diseases. 
Before the discovery of RNA-seq, microarray-based methods and Sanger sequencing were used for transcriptome analysis. However, while...