For some questions, the answer is an exact list of the microbes present that can be referenced with past work and carried forward to future studies. Other questions focus on changes in specific microbial strains or metabolic ability, or what biomolecules a community can produce. We draw on all these approaches to reconstruct how microbes behave and interact in the context of your research.

Different methods for surveying microbial communities provide different answers. We advise our clients on the method of sequencing that is most effective for answering their specific questions. The SeqBiome team has experience in working with multiple Illumina, ION and Oxford Nanopore Technology platforms and can work with you to identify the platform that best suits your needs.

SeqBiome employs an extensive array of positive controls (mock communities, replicates across runs to ensure consistent results) and negative controls (e.g., to investigate the presence of kit and other contaminants within samples received).

SeqBiome provides 16S rRNA amplicon, shallow and deep shotgun sequencing of metagenomes and metatranscriptomes. Our bioinformatic analysis services cover a broad range of microbiomes, facilitating in-depth analyses of microbial taxonomy (16S rRNA gene/transcript amplicons), functional potential (metagenomics) and activity (metatranscriptomics).