title: Flow cytometry for enrichment and titration in massively parallel DNA sequencing.
abstract: Massively parallel DNA sequencing is revolutionizing genomics research throughout the life sciences. However, the reagent costs and labor requirements in current sequencing protocols are still substantial, although improvements are continuously being made. Here, we demonstrate an effective alternative to existing sample titration protocols for the Roche/454 system using Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) technology to determine the optimal DNA-to-bead ratio prior to large-scale sequencing. Our method, which eliminates the need for the costly pilot sequencing of samples during titration is capable of rapidly providing accurate DNA-to-bead ratios that are not biased by the quantification and sedimentation steps included in current protocols. Moreover, we demonstrate that FACS sorting can be readily used to highly enrich fractions of beads carrying template DNA, with near total elimination of empty beads and no downstream sacrifice of DNA sequencing quality. Automated enrichment by FACS is a simple approach to obtain pure samples for bead-based sequencing systems, and offers an efficient, low-cost alternative to current enrichment protocols.
authors.affiliation: School of Biotechnology, Division of Gene Technology, AlbaNova University Center, Royal Institute of Technology, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sandberg
authors.forename: Patrik L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Ståhl
authors.forename: Afshin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ahmadian
authors.forename: Magnus K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Bjursell
authors.forename: Joakim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lundeberg
mesh_terms: D005434:Flow Cytometry / Q000379:methods*; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D006801:Humans; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*; D017186:Titrimetry
chemical_list: D005456:Fluorescent Dyes