Question regarding the error rate of queries that BWA is designed for

[phr]

Hello, I was wondering if someone could explain the following sentence to me:

"The first algorithm is designed for short queries up to ~200bp with low error rate (<3%)." (http://bio-bwa.sourceforge.net/bwa.shtml).

I'm fairly new to all of this, and confused by the error rate comment. What is this error rate?

Thanks for the help!

[usad]

Likely this refers to the proportion of sequencing errors in your reads. As you may know the sequence reads are not error free and some technologies are more error prone than others. Error rates for common platforms you might find for example in the NGs field guide (molecular ecolgist) or surely here :-)