I think that’s a use-case for Nanopore in general, but they explicitly call out that the app here is only useable against small genomes (Virus/Bacteria). I actually really prefer the movement away from optical reads and using smarter materials, some of the PacBio stuff is still optical but is focused on single cell work mediated by nano-materials as well which is interesting.

The part I was really interested in was why portability matters, instead of just having a bench-top Nanopore. I think the idea is that it will be more hobbyist friendly, would be fun to sequence random stuff while hiking. My concern is that the market for these devices isn’t actually that large, as any place doing meaningful analytics is probably going to want a bench top unit.

Looking at the prices, now, though I think $1,000 for the minION is about what I’d be willing to pay for that vs a $50,000 benchtop unit. The fact that it does RNA too is huge, as that has a lot of benefits to doing it as close to site of harvest.