What is depth of sequencing?

Written by Rani Powers, PhD

Depth of sequencing = (total number of reads * average read length) / total length of all the exons.

A sequence depth of 5 - 15million reads can provide a good representation of changes in highly expressed genes but to accurately detect significant changes in lowly expressed genes, sequencing depth should be closer to 20 - 50million reads. This amount of depth can also provide important information about alternative splicing.