5 ms·

You're buying a service for the 500-800$. Here you're buying a flowcell for 1000$ (the "sequencer" is more or less free). The technology is pretty different an

You're buying a service for the 500-800$. Here you're buying a flowcell for 1000$ (the "sequencer" is more or less free). The technology is pretty different and a lot more bleeding edge. If what you want is just a genome aligned to a known reference and you can wait a few days then this is not what you want. We use ONT's minION for strange niche stuff, where either the DNA prep method matters or the latency (the time from loading to the first data out of the machine) matters. Read quality is typically not as good as illumina, so for applications where we need quality we stick with the NextSeq. There's no reason to think nanopore technology won't get better though, but for now, if you've got the money illumina is still the way to go most of the time.

burfog 9y ago
If you want to do a human or a dozen related humans, and then discard the equipment, is there anything cheaper? That is, without handing the DNA over to somebody else.
- aroch 9y ago
  A MiniSeq or MiSeq would be cheaper by the time you do the 3 flow cell/person (minimum -- they claim 10-20GB/flow cell but that's bullshit -- so at least ~4K, probably closer to $8k of chemistry/person). You can get a used MiSeq and for ~$50k then its ~1500/person
- daemonk 9y ago
  If you want to do absolutely everything yourself from DNA extraction to sequencing and data analysis, then yes, this is probably the cheapest way. But you also need to consider how you prepare your DNA to go into the Nanopore. It's a lot more investment than you might think. Extracting your DNA in a clean enough way for it to work with the Nanopore will require equipment/facilities that most people will not have access to (phenol/chloroform is the optimal way to extract DNA, which will require a fume hood and toxic chemical disposal). Depending on how you want to prep your DNA, you might need more specialized equipment/reagents (Ampure beads, ligation kits, end-prep/TA-tailing, etc).

burfog 9y ago

If you want to do a human or a dozen related humans, and then discard the equipment, is there anything cheaper? That is, without handing the DNA over to somebody else.

aroch 9y ago
A MiniSeq or MiSeq would be cheaper by the time you do the 3 flow cell/person (minimum -- they claim 10-20GB/flow cell but that's bullshit -- so at least ~4K, probably closer to $8k of chemistry/person). You can get a used MiSeq and for ~$50k then its ~1500/person
daemonk 9y ago
If you want to do absolutely everything yourself from DNA extraction to sequencing and data analysis, then yes, this is probably the cheapest way. But you also need to consider how you prepare your DNA to go into the Nanopore. It's a lot more investment than you might think. Extracting your DNA in a clean enough way for it to work with the Nanopore will require equipment/facilities that most people will not have access to (phenol/chloroform is the optimal way to extract DNA, which will require a fume hood and toxic chemical disposal). Depending on how you want to prep your DNA, you might need more specialized equipment/reagents (Ampure beads, ligation kits, end-prep/TA-tailing, etc).