Wow. Can I do whole-genome sequencing with this?
Is this a similar product/result as buying whole genome sequencing from an established company for the $500 to $800 they charge these days?
Is this a similar product/result as buying whole genome sequencing from an established company for the $500 to $800 they charge these days?
We use ONT's minION for strange niche stuff, where either the DNA prep method matters or the latency (the time from loading to the first data out of the machine) matters. Read quality is typically not as good as illumina, so for applications where we need quality we stick with the NextSeq. There's no reason to think nanopore technology won't get better though, but for now, if you've got the money illumina is still the way to go most of the time.
That is, without handing the DNA over to somebody else.
But you also need to consider how you prepare your DNA to go into the Nanopore. It's a lot more investment than you might think. Extracting your DNA in a clean enough way for it to work with the Nanopore will require equipment/facilities that most people will not have access to (phenol/chloroform is the optimal way to extract DNA, which will require a fume hood and toxic chemical disposal). Depending on how you want to prep your DNA, you might need more specialized equipment/reagents (Ampure beads, ligation kits, end-prep/TA-tailing, etc).
> You're buying a service for the 500-800$. Here you're buying a flowcell for 1000$ (the "sequencer" is more or less free). The technology is pretty different and a lot more bleeding edge. If what you want is just a genome aligned to a known reference and you can wait a few days then this is not what you want. We use ONT's minION for strange niche stuff, where either the DNA prep method matters or the latency (the time from loading to the first data out of the machine) matters. Read quality is typically not as good as illumina, so for applications where we need quality we stick with the NextSeq. There's no reason to think nanopore technology won't get better though, but for now, if you've got the money illumina is still the way to go most of the time. >