Role of the normal gut microbiota

Table 1 Advantages and disadvantages of few of the currently available next generation sequencing techniques[15,16]

Techniques used in next generation sequencing	Accuracy	Advantages	Disadvantages
454 Pyrosequencing	99.9%	Less amount of sample, long read lengths, large number of samples can be easily read	Homopolymer errors Expensive
Shot gun Sequencing	98%	Short reads in short time	Assembly process is computationally expensive
Illumina Sequencing (Sequencing by synthesis)	98%	Accurate, quicker, reliable and cheap	Expensive
Pacific Bio Sequencing (single molecule real-time sequencing)	99.9%	Fast and provides long read length	Expensive equipment
Ion Torrent Sequencing (Ion semiconductor)	98%	Fast and less expensive equipment	Multiple monomer errors
SOLiD (Sequencing by Ligation) Sequencing	99.9%	Less expensive when compared to other methods	Slow and difficult to sequence palindromes