Jun C, et al. - Researchers evaluated resected valves of 44 infective endocarditis (IE) cases and 7 rejected IE subjects to estimate the underlying pathogens of IE by next-generation sequencing, a metagenomic method with next-generation sequencing (NGS). They reported the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values and negative predictive values of 97.6%, 85.7%, 97.6%, and 85.7% as compared to 46.2%, 100%, 100%, and 12.5% for blood culture whereas 17.1%, 100%, 100%, and 17.1% for valve culture and 51.4%, 100%, 100%, and 26.1% for valve Gram staining, respectively were recorded. They conferred NGS technique with superior sensitivity and shorter turnaround time vs culture-based methods for recognizing the causative pathogens of IE. They suggested the NGS technology, a fundamental supplement to culture-based methods, especially for unculturable or difficult-to-culture microorganisms.