The importance of supplemental short read sequencing data with long reads (hybrid sequencing) has been publicly proclaimed by several institutions including Genomics England and the World Health Organization (WHO).  In particular the WHO states that short and long reads should be generated “ideally from the same DNA extract. A recently developed method of hybrid assembly of both short and long reads has been extremely useful for resolving complex bacterial genomes and mega-plasmids with high accuracy” (GLASS report, 2020, page 28 ).  

HMW-DNA extraction is a bottleneck for the routine adaptation of long read sequencing as recognized by the NHS (Input DNA should ideally be in long fragments (high molecular weight DNA), which can be a challenge for standard automated laboratory DNA isolation methods. https://www.genomicseducation.hee.nhs.uk/genotes/knowledge-hub/long-read-sequencing/) and many others.  In practice users will first generate large volume of short read sequencing data and will need to trace the original biological sample and if available re-extract DNA using a HMW-DNA kit to generate supplemental long reads.  Because Fire Monkey is so user-friendly in both a manual spin-column and magnetic beads automated format, that does not require time consuming overnight incubation steps it can be routinely adapted for both short and long read sequencing use.  A single DNA extract can be used for both types of sequencing making Fire Monkey essentially a sequencing agnostic product.