Oxford Nanopore Announces Tech Updates

Oxford Nanopore delivers technology update at annual London Calling conference: bringing together years of innovation to showcase one sensing platform for all biological analyses

OXFORD, UK / ACCESSWIRE / May 20, 2022 / At the annual London Calling conference, CTO Clive Brown and colleagues James Clarke, Stuart Reid, Lakmal Jayasinghe and Rosemary Sinclair Dokos have provided an Oxford Nanopore tech update summarising the status of its nanopore sensing platform, key recent developments that drive improved accuracy and increased output, and outlined the vision for future developments.

With the latest updates, nanopore sequencing can now deliver very accurate, comprehensive data outputs, at high yields, with the ability to sequence short or long fragments, in real time and capture all variant types in one experiment, on one platform. Oxford Nanopore technology enables users to fit the technology to their biological question.

Users are now able to perform high-throughput, comprehensive genomic, transcriptomic and epigenetic analyses on a single platform. Early data on the recognition of individual amino acids on our nanopore platform was also shared.

Highlights of the talk included:

• The introduction of "best of both'' sequencing chemistry, combining the latest R10.4.1 flow cells with the latest Kit14 to deliver high-accuracy, high-output sequencing data, achieving 99.6% accurate single molecule raw-read simplex data and 99.92% duplex with tunable runs for further flexibility and optimisation;
• Current R9 flow cells and Kits 10/11 - already enabling a broad range of high-impact scientific analyses - will continue to be supported as users transition to R10.4.1 and Kit 14;
• First early access shipment of the palm-size PromethION 2 (P2) solo device, a high-output, affordable nanopore sequencer;
• Developments in methylation analysis tools, including Remora, making Oxford Nanopore the most comprehensive technology for characterising methylation;
• Examples of the utility of Short Fragment Mode on the nanopore platform, including methylation and nucleosome analysis of cell-free DNA;
• A new sequencing file format, pod5, that is designed to replace fast5 and enable faster file writing. This supports increasing device outputs and accuracy, enabling smaller raw data file sizes and streamlining downstream analysis;
• Ability to characterise individual amino acids in a short peptide sequence on the Oxford Nanopore platform; an early step towards protein sequencing.

Further details of the tech update, which will shortly be available as a video at www.nanoporetech.com/news: