Oxford Nanopore MinION/Flongle
The Nanopore chemistry has been developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies.
Strands of DNA or RNA pass through the pores and bases are identified in in real-time due to the detection of changes in current, each base or methylated base giving a unique pattern.
Overview
The devices are small, light, and portable allowing sequencing on the bench or in the field and the real-time analysis gives the users immediate access to results.
The technology can process a wide range of read lengths from 20bp to 4Mbp, which allows a wide range of applications including:
- Whole genome sequencing
- Targeted sequencing
- RNA sequencing
- Metagenomics
- Epigenetics
- SNP
- Transcript isoforms
Technical specifications
The newest chemistries are available for each device is R10.4.1 with legacy chemistry flow cells available for the Minions (R9.4.1).
The newest chemistries have improved accuracy by up to 99.9% rivalling the short-read accuracy rates.
The Flongle can produce up to 2.8Gbp of data suitable for small or pilot experiments or useful to quality control a library before committing to a bigger flow cell.
The Minion gives a yield of up to 50Gbp of data which is suitable for Transcriptome, Genome or multiplex amplicon workflows.
Library prep kits are available to cover a wide range of workflows including:
- Rapid Barcoding
- Cas9
- Ligation
- Ultra long ligation
- Direct Methylation
- 16S
- Amplicon multiplexing
- Direct RNA sequencing
- RNA-cDNA PCR sequencing
Software
Base-calling:
- MinKNOW
- Guppy
Basecalled reads are available as .fast5 and FASTQ files.
How to book
Contact BIOSI-GRH@cardiff.ac.uk for access.
Costs
Contact Genomics Research Hub for details of costs at BIOSI-GRH@cardiff.ac.uk.
Training and support
All users must be trained and registered by Genomics Research Hub staff before using any of the instruments within the Hub.
Health and safety
To comply with Cardiff University Health and Safety Policy, individuals must receive appropriate training before using any of the equipment within the Genomics Research Hub and be aware of the risks involved in its use.
Furthermore, for use of any of the sequencers, users must:
- Receive training from a member of the Genomics Research Hub staff (indirect training from other users will not be sufficient)
- Read and understand the latest Risk Assessment for the Genomics Research Hub
If top-up training is required, please notify Hub staff when making a booking and this can be provided before your planned session.
Rules and regulations
All users of the Genomics Research Hub are expected to observe the following. If they fail to comply they will lose their access rights:
- Food and drink are not permitted within the facility.
- All waste material (including laboratory gloves) should be properly disposed of in the clinical waste bins provided.
- Coats and bags should not be brought into the laboratories. Leave them in the adjoining office.
- Do not use any equipment that you have not been properly trained for. All users should familiarise themselves with the appropriate risk assessments for the procedures being undertaken.
- All USB data storage devices must be virus-checked before plugging them into any of our systems.
