HBB and thalassemia: Full-length sequencing of HBA1/2 and HBB genes associated with thalassemia using SMRT provided complete variation information of the 2 alleles.11 Further, SMRT increased the positive detection rate of the thalassemia gene by 4.9% to 9.91% compared to the conventional genetic techniques.12,13 This has helped confirm that SMRT is a scalable, accurate, and cost-effective method for genotyping.