Long-read sequencing: Steven Salzberg, Johns Hopkins University

Conversations with scientists

Dr. Steven Salzberg is a Johns Hopkins University researcher and director of the Center for Computational Biology at Hopkins. I spoke with him about genomics, about long-read sequencing, about human biology and human diversity, about funding, technology choice, about complete and incomplete genomes, about jobs in bioinformatics. He described his technology choices and about the choices one has to make in small labs. He shared his thoughts about the trend toward pangenomes and graph genomes. And he described how technology has changed and how happy that makes him. Teeny reminder, Steven Salzberg headed bioinformatics at TIGR, the Institute for Genomic Research run by J. Craig Venter. It was part of the venture to determine the sequence of the human genome. And yes, there were human genome assemblies based on teeny tiny read lengths.