Sequencing
DNA sequencing
First generation
Sanger

Sanger

Sanger sequencing, also known as the “chain termination method,” is a DNA sequencing technique that was developed by the English biochemist Frederick Sanger and his colleagues in 1977 1. This method is designed for determining the sequence of nucleotide bases in a piece of DNA (commonly less than 1,000 bp in length) with 99.99% base accuracy 2. These fragments are then used to assemble larger DNA fragments and, eventually, entire chromosomes.

First, feel free to watch this video to get an overview of how Sanger sequencing works.

  1. Sanger, F., Nicklen, S., & Coulson, A. R. (1977). DNA sequencing with chain-terminating inhibitors. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 74(12), 5463-5467. doi: 10.1073/pnas.74.12.5463 ↩︎

  2. Shendure, J., & Ji, H. (2008). Next-generation DNA sequencing. Nature biotechnology, 26(10), 1135-1145. doi: 10.1038/nbt1486 ↩︎

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