Infectious disease
Offering comprehensive, real-time insights into infectious disease samples — from pathogen identification and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) profiling to the assembly of high-quality genomes and variant identification — nanopore sequencing delivers immediate access to the critical genomic epidemiology data required for effective control of infectious disease outbreaks. Sequence in the lab or at sample source at a scale to suit your needs, with powerful portable and high-throughput nanopore sequencing devices.
Application of nanopore sequencing to identify antimicrobial resistance genes, mobile genetic elements and virulence factors
ONT sequencing offers unique advantages to short-read sequencing including lower equipment costs, reduced turnaround times from days to hours, real-time basecalling, enrichment of samples via adaptive sampling and high portability
Kimani, R. et al., bioRxiv (2023)
Oxford Nanopore sequencing
Traditional short-read technologies
Real-time data streaming
- Immediate access to actionable results, including pathogen identification, variant analysis, and antimicrobial resistance
- Stop sequencing when sufficient data generated — wash and reuse flow cell
- Comprehensive data analysis tools — including EPI2ME for real-time species identification and AMR profiling
Fixed run time with bulk data delivery
Increased time-to-result; less amenable to time-critical applications
Scalable — portable to high throughput
- Sequence anywhere with portable, low-cost MinION devices — starting at just $1,000, including sequencing reagents
- Scale up with modular GridION and PromethION — suitable for ultra-high-throughput sequencing of pathogen and complex metagenomic samples alongside other experiments, such as host genomics
Constrained to the lab
Considerable site infrastructure and set-up requirements combined with high platform costs can limit accessibility
Direct detection of DNA/RNA methylation
- Scale your sequencing to your needs — run one to thousands of samples on a single device
- Sequence what you want, when you want — no sample batching required
Limited flexibility
Sample batching may be required for optimal efficiency, potentially delaying results until sufficient samples are acquired
Unrestricted read length (>4 Mb achieved)
- Resolve complete genomes and plasmids
- Span and delineate challenging regions, including structural variants and repeat regions
- Assemble complete genomes from metagenomic samples
- Discriminate closely related species
- Generate complete viral sequences from single reads
- Sequence fragments as short as 20bp using Short Fragment Mode
Read length typically 50–300 bp
Short reads do not typically span entire regions of interest, including repeats and structural variants, or full-length RNA transcripts, resulting in fragmented assemblies and ambiguous transcript isoform identification
Streamlined, automatable workflows
- Sample prep in as little as 10 minutes, including multiplexing
- Whole genome, metagenomic, targeted, direct RNA, and cDNA sequencing approaches
- Eliminate amplification bias and detect base modifications alongside nucleotide sequence with amplification-free protocols
Laborious workflows
Lengthy sample preparation with requirement for amplification — removing base modifications (e.g. methylation) and increasing the potential for sequencing bias
Delivering the future of genomic pathogen surveillance
From Ebola, Zika, and COVID-19, to antimicrobial resistant (AMR) bacterial and fungal infections, discover how portable, real-time nanopore sequencing is being utilised by researchers worldwide to support rapid identification and control of infectious disease outbreaks. Read customer case studies on mpox virus, poliovirus, and AMR profiling, and find out how nanopore sequencing overcomes the limitations of traditional genomic pathogen surveillance techniques.
Get more infectious disease content, including getting started guides, workflows, white papers, and videos, in our Resource centre.
Rapid detection of mpox virus
Adela Alcolea-Medina and colleagues at the Centre for Clinical Infection & Diagnostics Research, UK, used nanopore technology to develop a seven-hour metagenomic workflow — from sample receipt to answer — that enables the detection of low-abundance RNA and DNA viruses in different sample types. Discover how the team used this to rapidly detect mpox virus, demonstrating the potential utility of this method to differentiate between viruses with similar symptoms with a short turnaround time.
Find more details on this study and other infectious disease case studies in the pathogen surveillance white paper.
Emergence of new viral infections with significant public health impact are frequent events, which re-enforces the need for comprehensive methodologies to detect rare, novel or emerging pathogens
Molecular surveillance of malaria with nanopore sequencing to investigate anti-malarial resistance
With nanopore sequencing, the malaria-causing protist Plasmodium falciparum can be genetically sequenced from a blood sample without the need to grow the parasite in a laboratory, reducing turnaround times and increasing scalability of the workflow for surveillance of disease transmission and drug resistance. Discover how William Hamilton and his colleagues at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK, utilised the portable MinION to work with rural community facilities across Ghana to perform nanopore sequencing of blood research samples for the analysis of anti-malaria drug resistance in P. falciparum.
We could implement this entirely end-to-end [workflow] in an endemic setting, in a portable way, in a way that was not super resource-intensive
William Hamilton, Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK
Scalable sequencing of infectious disease samples
Fully scalable, real-time nanopore sequencing devices are available to suit all infectious disease sequencing requirements — from in-field pathogen surveillance and characterisation to high-volume analysis of outbreak samples and host genetics.
GridION
Running up to five independent MinION or Flongle Flow Cells with powerful, integrated compute, GridION provides the flexibility to run multiple experiments, on-demand — ideal for rapid and scalable analysis of pathogen samples and tracking novel variants.
Combining up to 48 independently addressable, high-capacity flow cells with powerful, integrated compute, PromethION 48 delivers flexible, on-demand access to terabases of sequencing data.
Flexible, large-scale sequencing using up to 24 independent, high-capacity flow cells.
Offering two independent PromethION Flow Cells for low-cost access to high-output sequencing - ideal for smaller sample number whole-genome and transcriptome projects.
Powerful, portable sequencing of pathogen samples from just $1,000, including sequencing reagents.
Adapting MinION and GridION for the most cost-effective access to smaller, routine tests and analyses.
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