Table 1.

Comparison of some sequencing methods.

Method	Single-Molecule Real-Time Sequencing (Pacific Bio)	Ion Semiconductor (Ion Torrent Sequencing)	Sequencing by Synthesis (Illumina)	Chain Termination (Sanger Sequencing)
Read length	2,900 bp	200 bp	50 to 250 bp	400 to 900 bp
Accuracy	99%	98%	98%	99.9%
Reads per run	35–75 thousand	up to 5 million	up to 3 billion	N/A
Time per run	30 min to 2 h	2 h	1 to 10 days,	20 min to 3 h
Cost per 1 million bases (in US$)	$2	$1	$0.05 to $0.15	$2,400
Advantages	Rapid and has longest read length.	Equipment is relatively less expensive and Fast.	Sequence yield could be very high depending upon equipment model	Long individual reads. Wide application
Disadvantages	Yield tends to be low at high accuracy. Equipment is very expensive.	Prone to homopolymer errors.	Equipment can be very expensive.	Equipment is expensive and not suitable for larger sequencing projects.
References	[46,48].	[46,47]	[43,44,46]	[39]