Building a consensus sequence involves combining multiple copies of a specific DNA/RNA region, sequenced in separate reads, into a single high-quality sequence.

In doing so, the multiple copies are combined together to form single sequence, meaning random errors are averaged ‘cancelled’ out, producing a more accurate ‘consensus’ sequence to work from (more information on accuracy can be found here.)

Although most commonly used in the context of genome assembly, consensus generation can also be applied to specific regions of interest, by combining multiple exact copies of a single original fragment or molecule into a single high-quality sequence.