Best Practices for Illumina Library Preparation

In this unit, we describe a set of protocols and recommendations for Illumina library preparation. We review best practices in template quantitation methods; template fragmentation methodologies; solid-phase reverse-immobilization cleanup, including buffer exchange and size selection; end repair, A-tailing, and adapter ligation; indexing strategies; considerations regarding whether to use polymerase chain reaction; final library quantification methodologies; and normalization and pooling strategies. These workflows are applicable to both high-throughput and low-throughput Illumina library preparation and should help reduce bias, increase cost effectiveness, and produce high library yields. This is an extensive update of the previous version of this unit.