Transcriptome Atlas by Long-Read RNA Sequencing: Contribution to a Reference Transcriptome

The recent emergence of long-read transcriptome sequencing has helped improve the overall accuracy of gene prediction compared with that by short-read RNA-Seq. In addition, the technology can offer a more comprehensive view of functional genomics in uncharacterized species with an efficient full-length unigene build and high-precision gene annotation, thus being efficient in develop-ing transcriptome data resources from useful genetic pools. Hence, I will review the applications of long-read RNA isoform sequencing, including the relative merits of the technology, the improvement of the accuracy in gene prediction and gene annotation, and the full-length unigene builds in a new genome; the limitations of the technology will be also discussed. The review will be valuable in collecting data resources for functional genomic studies.