{"id":26710,"date":"2015-03-26T12:18:48","date_gmt":"2015-03-26T16:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=26710"},"modified":"2016-06-11T12:35:19","modified_gmt":"2016-06-11T16:35:19","slug":"hand-held-dna-sequencer-ids-bacteria-viruses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=26710","title":{"rendered":"Hand-Held DNA Sequencer IDs Bacteria, Viruses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MinIon<\/a>
MinIon device (Biomed Central)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

26 March 2015. A palm-sized DNA sequencing device was able to identify a number of bacteria and viruses, and discriminate between closely related species in about 6 hours. Tests of the MinIon device<\/a>, made by Oxford Nanopore Technologies<\/a> in Oxford, U.K., were reported today in the journal GigaScience<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oxford Nanopore is developing the\u00a0MinIon as a portable disease surveillance system that analyzes DNA from blood samples in the field, and operates as a plug-in peripheral on a laptop computer. The company makes early versions<\/a> of the system available to researchers for hands-on testing, and the GigaScience<\/em> article reports on results by testers at the U.S. Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center<\/a> in Aberdeen, Maryland and the company Signature Science LLC<\/a> in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n

Oxford Nanopore\u00a0is a spin-off<\/a> from University of Oxford, founded in 2005 and licensing technology from research by biochemistry professor Hagan Bayley<\/a>. The company’s technology<\/a> is based on straining and isolating individual DNA strands through nanoscale pores in a membrane that allows for electronic sequencing processes to identify the base components of DNA passing through the pore. These nanopores were originally formed in proteins in a lipid membrane, but the company since introduced synthetic materials for nanopores, including graphene.<\/p>\n

The team from Edgewood and Signature Science analyzed lab samples of E. coli<\/em> bacteria and 3 types of pox viruses: cowpox<\/a> and 2 closely related strains of vaccinia<\/a>, used to develop smallpox vaccines. Data generated by the\u00a0MinIon were then analyzed with software performing polymerase chain reactions that amplify single copies of DNA into amplicons<\/a>, providing multiple copies of sequences.<\/p>\n

The use of amplicons makes it possible, say the authors, to overcome a limitation of the MinIon, namely a high read error rate of 30 percent. The multiple sequences provide a more robust analytical pool after about 6 hours that the researchers could then compare to known reference sequences for E. coli<\/em> and the 3 pox viruses. The results show the system was able to successfully identify the 4 samples, including the individual strain of E. coli<\/em> and distinguish between the 2 closely related vaccinia samples.<\/p>\n

Oxford Nanopore says additional analyses of\u00a0MinIon data from can be performed through cloud-based software. The following 4 minute video tells more about the MinIon.<\/p>\n