Patent ID: 8771958

Claim:
A method of characterizing nucleotide sequences of one or more target polynucleotides, the method comprising the steps of: providing a plurality of aliquots, at least some of which comprise one or more fragments of the target polynucleotide(s); amplifying the fragments in the aliquots to produce first amplicons; randomly fragmenting the amplicons in the aliquots to produce subfragments; incorporating oliqonucleotide tags of known sequence into at least some of the subfragments in at least some of the aliquots, whereby the tag identifies the aliquot; obtaining sequence reads of the target polynucleotides and the oliqonucleotide tag of at least some of the subfragments; and assembling the sequence reads to produce an assembled sequence of the target polynucleotide(s), wherein the assembling comprises grouping the sequence reads according to the sequence of the oliqonucleotide tags.