The MinION: Applications in Food safety (London Calling presentation)

Nanopore sequencing represents a paradigm shift in DNA sequencing, and today it is the only sequencing technology that measures an actual single molecule of DNA. The Oxford Nanopore MinION is the world’s first mobile DNA sequencing device, measuring 4” in length and powered by the USB port of a laptop. At the University of Edinburgh, we have been involved with the MinION access programme since the beginning and have used the platform to sequence a number of small- to medium- sized genomes, and have used the MinION data both for variant calling and scaffolding of genomes. I will describe the results of these analyses. We have also developed software to help organise and analyse MinION data, and we will describe the development path for this software, which includes enabling it for mobile, in-field pathogen detection. Finally, I will present a future vision for the MinION platform, and nanopore sequencing in general.