Reliable Sequencing from Low-Biomass Samples

Low-biomass samples can contain valuable microbial information, but contamination, technical background, and limited input molecules can make sequencing results difficult to interpret. This webinar will discuss practical strategies for building reliable low-biomass workflows and how these principles enabled the development of a method for genome-resolved viral sequencing from ultra-low-input samples.

• How blanks, controls, and careful laboratory practices can identify and reduce contamination.
• How to distinguish interpretable biological signal from technical background in low-biomass datasets.
• How these principles can enable sequencing and genome recovery from extremely low-input microbial samples.

Together, these approaches provide a framework for generating more reliable and interpretable sequencing data from samples where microbial biomass is limited. The same principles can be applied broadly across bacterial, viral, and other microbiome sequencing applications.