I don't know the exact answer, but I do know that the various methods of "next generation" sequencing each have advantages and disadvantages for different applications. The "raw error rate" may not be as important as finished sequence error rate in many applications, but it depends on if you need long reads or short reads, and if your sample is homogeneous (like a bacterial clone or isolate) or diploid (50:50 mix at heterogeneous sites) or some type of population diversity (like a viral swarm in a HIV-infected individual). Sequencing to get complete bacterial genome or complete mitochondrial genome is a different task than sequencing 16S rRNA or sequencing PCR products. You need much more information on costs and other factors, and not just one factor such as raw error rate, to make a good decision.

A quite comprehensive sudy was published in 2016: Article A comprehensive benchmarking study of protocols and sequenci...

Don't know if there have been changes since then.

Dear Foley,

Thank you for your answer!

Yeap. PacBio Sequencing have a advantage for genome or transcriptome

sequencing due to its longer length reads. For my purpose, I want to sequence the amplicons of marine micro-algae generated from 28S D1D2 (more than 500 bp). Illumina and Ion torrent platform are not the best choices due to their read length limitation (including adapter and barcode etc. exceed their maximum read length). 454 is good but it is difficult to find services in our local city. Our works are tend to find out species from a certain Genus in environment samples, just like your example, a viral swarm in a HIV-infectged individual. So, PacBio sequecing came into our sight, however, higher error rate is our concern. Sequencing technology has improved rapidly, I just want to konw whether the third generation sequencing is good for some type of population diversity investigation now.

Thank you again!

Best regards!

Haven Chen

Dear Jones,

Thanks for your help! I will check it later.

Best regards!

Haven Chen