Remarkable advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies have fundamentally changed our understanding of the genetic and epigenetic molecular bases underlying human health and diseases. As these technologies continue to revolutionize molecular biology leading to fresh perspectives, it is imperative to thoroughly consider the enormous excitement surrounding the technologies by highlighting the characteristics of platforms and their global trends as well as potential benefits and limitations. To date, with a variety of platforms, the technologies provide an impressive range of applications, including sequencing of whole genomes and transcriptomes, identifying of genome modifications, and profiling of protein interactions. Because these applications produce a flood of data, simultaneous development of bioinformatics tools is required to efficiently deal with the big data and to comprehensively analyze them. This review covers the major achievements and performances of the high-throughput sequencing and further summarizes the characteristics of their applications along with introducing applicable bioinformatics tools. Moreover, a step-by-step procedure for a practical transcriptome analysis is described employing an analytical pipeline. Clinical perspectives with special consideration to human oral health and diseases are also covered.
Keywords: bioinformatics; high-throughput sequencing; oral health and diseases; transcriptome analysis.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.