Oxford Nanopore Launches MinIT, Enabling Real Time, Portable DNA Sequencing

By Bio-IT World Staff

October 12, 2018 | Oxford Nanopore has announced they are shipping their new MinIT, a rapid analysis and device control accessory for nanopore DNA sequencing, to genomics researchers.

MinIT, equipped with a NVIDIA AGX system to enable real-time, high-throughput data analysis, will be used to run the MinION DNA/RNA sequencer, which was used by researchers in the most complete human genome ever assembled with a single technology.

Oxford Nanopore is confident MinIT will open up high-throughput, real-time nanopore sequencing to more users in more locations.

Just this week, a cohort of 11 undergraduate students deployed the MinIT and MinION aboard a research vessel in the Bering sea. They performed onboard analysis of seawater, examining communities of marine microorganisms. Getting real-time data during research expeditions that could last weeks or months will be useful to environmental scientists seeking to understand biodiversity in the ocean, and how climate change can affect microorganisms in the sea.

Researchers in East Africa have also used the MinIT and MinION to characterize pathogens affecting Cassava plants. Performing their experiments on a blanket, under a tree on a smallholding farm in Tanzania, the team characterized viruses responsible for cassava disease, from sample to answer in under three hours. This provides scientists and farmers with essential information when trying to fight plant pathogens to improve crop productivity.

MinIT is compatible with MinION, and also Flongle – an adapter for MinION that allows rapid, lower cost, smaller tests. Nanopore users have indicated that the MinIT will be used alongside MinION or Flongle in a variety of scenarios including rapid characterization of infectious disease samples, cancer research, environmental analyses and food testing.

MinIT also comes preconfigured with software to run nanopore sequencing experiments, removing the need for configuration of a laptop. The instrument software MinKNOW, and real-time analysis platform for nanopore data, EPI2ME, can both be run on MinIT.