SangerIlluminaera

SangerIlluminaera refers to a period in genomics, roughly from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, when Sanger sequencing and Illumina-based next-generation sequencing coexisted in many projects. The term emphasizes how Sanger's accurate, long-validated reads continued to be used for finishing and validation, while Illumina's high-throughput, cost-efficient short reads drove the overall data generation.

In practice, researchers often used Illumina for draft assemblies and variant discovery, followed by Sanger sequencing to close gaps, confirm structural variants, or validate ambiguous regions. This hybrid approach allowed larger and more complex genomes to be completed than with Sanger alone.

Significance: the era accelerated genome sequencing, enabled population-scale studies and hundreds of microbial genomes, and improved assembly quality and annotation. It also highlighted trade-offs between read length, error profiles, and coverage, and foreshadowed later shifts to long-read platforms, though Sanger and Illumina methods remained complementary in various finishing workflows.

Legacy: many contemporary assembly and validation pipelines retain a hybrid philosophy, using high-throughput short reads for coverage and long reads or targeted Sanger validation for polishing and finishing.