Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Long mate-pair libraries are invaluable tools for genome assembly. However, traditional methods of long mate-pair library construction require large (20 g) quantities of DNA and several days of hands-on time. Illuminas Nextera Long Mate-Pair (LMP) method is rapid and requires only 1 to 4 micrograms of input material. Here we present an initial assessment of the method for both gel-free and gel size-selected libraries using microbial, fungal, and plant samples. We observed uniform read coverage and high read uniqueness for Nextera LMP libraries. Assembly using ALLPATHS-LG generated low contig and scaffold numbers even with relatively low mate-pair coverage.