"Read Until" method published, allows real time 'tasting' of DNA to determine whether to sequence or reject it

Today, a landmark paper in DNA analysis methods was published in Nature Methods, by Matt Loose at the University of Nottingham.

The method, used with real-time nanopore sequencing, enables the user to analyse only DNA strands that contain pre-determined signatures of interest.  Matt Loose said "This is the first time that direct selection of specific DNA molecules has been shown on any device.  We hope that it will enable many future novel applications, especially for portable sequencing. This makes sequencing as efficient as possible and will provide a viable, informatics based alternative to traditional wet lab enrichment techniques. The application of this approach to a wide number of problems from pathogen detection to sequencing targeted regions of the human genome is now within reach."

Read more at GenomeWeb ($), which reports on its potential use in metagenomics, haplotyping or pathogen diagnostics.