London Calling conf concludes - watch the talks and review the announcements

The London Calling conference in London has now concluded. More than 250 scientists with an interest in nanopore sequencing gathered to watch plenary talks, review posters, surf the Live Lounge where nanopore technology was on show, and to exchange ideas. Watch the talks.

You can review announcements by following #nanoporeconf on social media, or here is a summary of the announcements that were made by Oxford Nanopore:

• SmidgION:  We announced the mobile-compatible device for DNA / RNA, looking to release 2017
• Direct RNA – for the first time, researchers will be able to perform direct RNA analysis in their lab or even in the field.  RNA developers’ kits are coming in the next few months.
• Kits – the rapid (10 min) 1D library prep kit is in the hands of developers, to be released fully soon.
• We opened up our store so that all our products can be seen (and shopped for) here https://store.nanoporetech.com/
• R9-the new, upgraded nanopore for faster, more accurate sequencing, is now fully available. The previous version R7 is no longer commercially available . Many talks outlined positive results of using R9
• Project Zumbador – this is a ‘SkunkWorx’ project to create a device that includes sample prep and library prep and is disposable,
• VolTRAX (automated, hands-off sample prep) – introducing the VolTRAX Introduction Programme. Registration opens Summer, delivery to customers Autumn. VIP registration will happen within the nanopore community
• Local Basecalling is coming soon and will help users in remote locations.  It will work through the current instrument control software, MinKNOW. This was demonstrated in talks eg using the MinION up a mountain to sequence arapidopsis.
• PromethION – first box shipped recently and so customer data will come separately but Clive Brown showed some internal data in his talk
• Oxford Nanopore released a number of posters on sample preparation, permafrost sequencing, ultra long reads and more, find them in publications