DNA sequencing consists of a number of methodologies, each adopts a
unique process of sequencing mechanisms. During 1970s, Sanger sequencing survived
the competition against other approaches and dominated DNA sequencing for a number
of decades. As stimulated by urgent demand of high throughput sequencing approaches
by the Human Genome Project and various genome projects that followed, Next-
Generation Sequencing evolved to replace Sanger sequencing as the main sequencing
approach. NGS consists of three major sequencing platforms (i.e., 454/Roche,
Solexa/Illumina and SOLiD/Life Technologies) and each has its own sequencing
mechanism. These mechanisms have experienced severe competition, leading to the
election of Illumina system by the sequencing market as the main stream sequencing
platform. Before we can fully appreciate the reasons leading to the success of the
Illumina system, here we analyze and discuss the sequencing mechanisms adopted by
these NGS platforms.
Keywords: 454, Bridge amplification, Emulsion PCR, in situ PCR, Illumina sequencing,
Next-generation sequencing, NGS, Solexa, SOLiD, Sequencing-by-synthesis,
Sequencing-by-ligation.
