Furthermore, it can also count on a noteworthy flexibility: in fact, its application has been reported to be successful in different research fields such as molecular diagnostics of genetic diseases, infectious diseases, cancer and pharmacogenomics. NGS technology is suitable for rapid and efficient sequencing of complex genomes too, with consequent time and cost reduction. The great success of NGS technology is due to the capability of massively sequencing millions of DNA reads, with the possibility to perform, at least, multi-gene analysis, by using very low amount of nucleic acids. They are both part of the next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology, a group of techniques revolutionizing the standard concept of nucleic acids sequencing. Growing efforts have been made to widen technical knowledge in this field until the discovery of the “second and third-generation sequencing” methods. in the late 70s, when they elaborated the most used method to sequence DNA, still considered as the gold standard in molecular diagnostics, even though it is expensive and time-consuming. To this end, a great innovation was brought by the pioneer work of Sanger et al. Since the application of modern technology in medicine, scientists always tried to understand the real nature of nucleic acids. This review intends to offer a view of the state of the art of NGS applications to CRC through examination of the most important technologies and discussion of recent published results. However, despite its unquestioned potential, NGS poses some issues calling for additional studies. Novel evidences have been presented also in other directions such as gut microbiota or CRC circulating tumor cells. Analysis of results is unveiling relevant perspectives aiding to evaluate the response to therapies. Several studies produced high-quality data in terms of mutation discovery, especially about actionable or less frequently mutated genes, epigenetics, transcriptomics. Cancer research began to use this innovative and highly performing method, and interesting results started to appear in colorectal cancer (CRC) analysis. The introduction of next-generation sequencing (NGS) represents a revolutionary step and promises to lead to massive improvements in our understanding on the role of nucleic acids functions. Since the establishment of the Sanger sequencing method, scientists around the world focused their efforts to progress in the field to produce the utmost technology.
0 kommentar(er)
