Oxford Nanopore's London Calling Kicks Off

May 25, 2016

By Bio-IT World Staff

1:50 Update: Clive Brown's talk at London Calling once again whipped the community into a frenzy. Brown announced: 

  • Project Zumbador: a simple, low cost, portable, combined sample and library prep device. In schematics, the device plugs directly into the flowcell. Raw sample would be added to one end, and emerge from the other end, ready to sequence on beads.
  • The SmidgION, a sequencer that plugs directly into an iPhone's lightning connector and headphone jack with a 256 channel flowcell, ideally Zumbador or VolTRAX. It should run 4-5 hours on your mobile device battery. Brown said ONT is targeting Q4 2017 for a release. 
  • Direct RNA sequencing; kits will be available to developers soon (poster with details)
  • retirement of the R7 pore, "gone to the dustbin of history"; launch of the R9 pore
  • achievement of 350 bps without loss

 

May 26, 2016 | London Calling, Oxford Nanopore’s user group conference, began this morning in London. Press were not invited to attend, but the program is full of users and bloggers and regulars on Twitter, and commentary is sure to flow freely via #nanoporeconf. Each attendee will receive the new MinION Mk 1B at the event.

Even under the shadow of the February lawsuit filed by Illumina, Oxford Nanopore hosts a packed program, with both lightning and plenary talks. Speakers hail from all over the world and are working on a range of projects: real-time pathogen detection, microbiome projects, plant and animal genomics, cancer projects, long read sequencing analysis, and more.

Clive Brown, Chief Technology Officer at Oxford Nanopore, will give his keynote—“Inside the SkunkWorx”—reviewing Oxford Nanopore’s technology and unveiling new developments at 5:30 pm local time (12:30 pm Eastern). Last year, Brown announced automated sample prep, introduced the PromethION, and debuted an expanded ASIC chip. In pricing news, he announced “pay-as-you-go” sequencing. In a March webinar, Brown introduced new chemistry, a new basecaller, and changes to the library prep. 

This year, “real-time” is a program theme, with the buzzword sprinkled across the program applied to both sequencing (tracking antibiotic resistance, surveillance of Ebola in Guinea) and analysis (the WIMP pipeline, rapid offline mapping). Members of the community are hoping for improved library prep and better software to fully realize fast and mobile sequencing.  

We will be collecting links, news, and resources here as the event progresses.

Resources

Preprints from London Calling speakers are collected here. 

Keith Robison's preview at Omics! Omics!, and his event summary from Sunday. 

Our look at the mobile MinION with Karen James

ONT product page for the SmidgION, a sequencer for the iPhone predicted to arrive next year

Clive Brown's talk, archived

All the posters, archived