Oxford Nanopore has come up with a DNA sequencing machine the amount of a USB reminiscence stick that can decode the building blocks of lifetime within hours rather than daysA UK firm spun outside from Oxford University has come up with a DNA sequencing machine the amount of a USB reminiscence stick, a go that is locate to revolutionise the industry.Privately owned Oxford Nanopore, which was spun outside of Oxford University in 2005, on Friday presented at a conference in Florida two fresh generation machines that can do the same job as contemporary mainframe-sized devices, and can decode the building blocks of lifetime within hours rather than days.The technology could be used in the field to do on-the-spot tests and sequencing of rapidly mutating infectious diseases like HIV and malaria to employment outside how to treat them, as well as prenatal screening for genetic defects and screening for genetic mutations of plants. The firm expects major agricultural companies like BASF and Monsanto to be interested.Oxford Nanopore has spent the at the end three years developing the machines in secrecy in collaboration with scientists at Harvard and University of California Santa Cruz. The devices are based on DNA “strand sequencing”, and could be launched as soon as the second half of the year.One of the machines, known as GridION, is the amount of a DVD player. They can be stacked and plugged into each other to increase the celerity. The other sequencer – the “MinION” which is expected to cost less than $900 (£569) – is as small as a USB reminiscence stick.Dr Gordon Sanghera, chief executive of Oxford Nanopore, said: “The exquisite science behind nanopore sensing has taken nearly two decades to reach this mark; a truly disruptive single molecule analysis technique, designed alongside fresh electronics to be a universal sequencing system. GridION and MinION are poised to deliver a completely fresh range of benefits to researchers and clinicians.”The DNA sequencing machines currently on the market, made by Illumina and Lifetime Technologies, both based in California, are much larger and capture far longer. Lifetime Tech is immediately taking orders for a $149,000 benchtop machine which can transcribe a person’s DNA in a day for encircling $1,000. Five years ago, it cost $10m to sequence a human genome.Oxford Nanopore’s technology claims to do the job within hours – viruses can be decoded within seconds – and is “truly disruptive and game-changing,” said Alan Aubrey, chief executive of IP Collection, which owns 21.5% of Oxford Nanopore. “The significance of this technology introduction is, in computing terms, analogous to moving from the mainframe to the laptop.”Strand sequencing is thought to be superior to a previous technology, exonuclease sequencing, as the DNA is glance at directly. In strand sequencing, an entire string of DNA passes intact through a tiny hole made by an engineered protein, or nanopore, in a cell membrane. “It’s like sucking spaghetti really quick,” said Sanghera. In exonuclease sequencing, the DNA building blocks are separated by an enzyme and drop through the hole one at a age.The main challenges were to slow the action down from 1m bases of DNA sequence a second to 300 bases a second, so the DNA can be glance at, and to solve the difficulty of reading many bases.Oxford Nanopore has a deal with Illumina for exonuclease sequencing however wants to commercialise its fresh machines itself.GeneticsHuman biologyPharmaceuticals industryUniversity of OxfordMedical researchJulia Kolleweguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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