FIELD: biotechnology.
SUBSTANCE: described is a method for performing incremental secondary analysis of nucleotide sequence readings, involving: (i) obtaining first data describing a plurality of first reads generated by a nucleic acid sequencer during a first reading interval, wherein each of the first reads represents a first ordered sequence of nucleotides; (ii) obtaining second data describing a plurality of second reads generated by the nucleic acid sequencer during a second reading interval performed after the first reading interval, wherein each of the second readings represents a second ordered sequence of nucleotides, wherein during obtaining the second data, the method also includes: (a) providing a nucleic acid sequencer with first data as input to a mapping and alignment unit; (b) obtaining, from the mapping and alignment unit, alignment results of the first data, which is a first plurality of reads, with a reference sequence; and (c) storing the obtained alignment results; (d) determining, based on the data describing the quality of the stored alignment results, the need to terminate the sequencing operation; and then (iii) instructing the mapping and alignment unit to begin aligning the second data representing the second plurality of reads with the reference sequence. Disclosed is a system for performing incremental secondary analysis of nucleotide sequence readings. Also disclosed is a corresponding machine-readable data medium.
EFFECT: invention extends the range of tools for analysing information obtained by sequencing.
25 cl, 10 dwg
