Abstract:Nanopore sequencing, as an emerging hotspot in sequencing technology, demonstrates tremendous potential in species identification, genome assembly, variant detection, and transcriptome analysis, owing to its distinctive advantages including extended read lengths, rapid detection capabilities, and compact instrumentation. However, nanopore sequencing data are characterized by high error rates and presence of insertions and deletions, which pose novel challenges for the application of conventional sequence alignment tools and the construction of reference databases. Focusing on the characteristics of nanopore data, this paper systematically sorts out sequence alignment tools suitable for nanopore sequencing, and elaborates on their advantages and limitations in processing sequence data for five different application scenarios: long-read sequencing, real-time sequencing, error rate compatibility, metagenomics, and structural variation detection. Meanwhile, from the perspective of data sources, this paper conducts multi-dimensional classification and organization of reference genome databases, and sorts out the key technologies for constructing high-quality nanopore databases. Through the collaborative analysis of alignment tools and databases, this paper provides references for the optimization and innovation of nanopore sequencing data analysis, and promotes the in-depth transformation of metagenomic sequencing from data generation to functional analysis.