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Short nucleotide sequence used by many sequencing methods in order to amplify DNA/RNA fragments, identify DNA/RNA fragments uniquely (Unique Molecular Identifier), anchor DNA/RNA fragments to the flow cell (Illumina). Adapters are useful during the sequencing process and sometimes during data analysis (e. g. indices for demultiplexing, UMIs for removing duplicates) but can be a nuisance and need to be removed prior to downstream analysis, e.g. alignment.