Clive G Brown: Nanopore Community Meeting 2018 talk

Clive G Brown, CTO of Oxford Nanopore, gave a tech update talk at the Nanopore Community Meeting.  You can watch the talk here, or digest the tweets, including links and pictures here.

Clive gave an overview of a variety of strategies for accuracy enhancement, including a new design of nanopore, R10, which is expected to be released in early 2019.  R10 has a longer barrel and double reader heads, meaning that more bases dominate the signal for greater accuracy (especially with homopolymers).  A new basecaller is being released that also enhances accuracy; individual bases are assigned individual probabilities. Integrated methylation analysis is also included. Looking to single molecule, rather than consensus accuracy, Clive outlined a new method called Linear Consensus Sequencing (LCS), which conjoins several copies of a strand and can be sequenced in one read, for high single molecule accuracy.  Updates are also being delivered to 1D^2 that take single read accuracy as high as 98%.  A variety of other analytical and chemistry strategies were outlined that also improve accuracy levels.

Clive also reviewed recent updates on RNA analysis using nanopore - three new kits are being released soon.  Clive spoke about an update to 'chunk sizing' that assists with structural variant analysis (old data can be re-analysed).  Even at low coverage, recall and precision values are good as demonstrated by results using the HG002 sample.

Reviewing a targeted selection process that uses CRISPR/Cas9, Clive showed results from a 10-gene panel that had been analysed using Flongle, producing clinically meaningful results on a $100 consumable.

Reviewing current yields on nanopore devices, Clive noted that current performance is now competitive on cost per base and yield with other systems.  Announcing the introduction in 2019 of two new versions of PromethION: X24 and X48, Clive also noted that PromethION will now be available under capital expenditure models as well as consumables-only models.  Order PromethION now at the store.

Clive announced that the MinION Mk1c - a self contained combination of MinION, MinIT and a screen, which is networkable using Wifi/bluetooth/SIM - is being further developed and is expected to be released in mid 2019.

Finally, Clive reviewed VolTRAX, which is also being developed into a droplet-based self contained sequencer that would be highly suitable for single cell sequencing and other novel applications.

Interested in user talks at the Nanopore Community Meeting? Read the writeups here.