By Aaron Krol
February 3, 2016 | Just over a year ago, Bio-IT World spoke to microbiologist Nick Loman about the recently released MinION DNA sequencer. The three-inch-long device, made by Oxford Nanopore Technologies of the UK, can read DNA in real time on a laptop, and Loman’s lab at the University of Birmingham was one of the first to receive one. Like many other early adopters we spoke to at the time, Loman was itching to try the MinION in real-world clinical contexts, following the genetic traces of an infection as it develops.
“You can imagine throwing one in a suitcase and taking it down to Sierra Leone to look at the Ebola outbreak,” he told us in that interview, which was conducted within weeks of the worst phase of the epidemic.
As a matter of fact, his team would go to Guinea instead.
Read the whole story at Bio-IT World.