The potential role of portable, scalable DNA / RNA analysis devices in healthcare is being explored by members of the biomedical research community.
The MinION - the portable, long read, real time DNA sequencer – has been used in infectious disease surveillance, pathogen analysis, cancer research, HLA analysis, reproductive health research and many other areas of biomedical research.
And now, the benchtop GridION is available, enabling up to five MinION Flow Cells with integrated compute, for 50-100Gb of DNA sequencing data or high volumes of RNA reads. The high-throughput, high sample-number, on-demand PromethION is being released into early access.
MinION is for Research Use Only. Oxford Nanopore intends to seek regulatory approval for a version of the MinION device that may be appropriate for diagnostic use.
How are your peers using the MinION for clinical research?
View these publications and movies to find out more.
What's in my pot (WIMP)
'What's in my pot' (WIMP) is a workflow that enables MinION users to identify pathogens, fungi, viruses or archaea in complex samples in real time.
Analysis begins as soon as sequence data starts being streamed (a few seconds after the experiment starts). Each read of streamed sequence data is compared against a database of microbial species, and an identification is made. At the same time, WIMP plots and updates a taxonomic tree of all microorganisms found in the sample
There are various workflows and techniques that have been developed by members of the nanopore community to perform or enhance assembly and species identification that can be explored in the publications area and within the nanopore community
How do I get started?
You can start using MinION straight away.
For a $1,000 fee you receive a MinION and starter pack of flow cells and kits. You also get access to a thriving online community of MinION users.