Next-generation sequencing: a revolution in the field of fish diseases

The recent technological advances in nucleic acid sequencing, called next-generation sequencing (NGS), have revolutionized the field of genomics. Now available in almost all molecular biology labs, NGS provides a huge amount of sequence data at relatively low cost. Research on fish pathogens has greatly benefited from these new technologies and NGS is now increasingly used to trace aquatic viruses, study virulence and evolution of pathogens or discover novel etiological agents that cause mortalities. This short review presents a brief history of the different sequencing technologies and illustrates their applications and limitations in the field of aquatic diseases.