Oxford Nanopore emerge from their burrow

Spring has come early in Oxford.


For anyone who assumed all the big sequencer news for 2012 (Ion Proton / HiSeq 2500) was already announced, Oxford Nanopore have just proven you wrong by announcing that CTO Clive Brown will present their "strand sequencing" method at AGBT in 2 weeks and will "independently commercialize" the technology in 2012.

It is important to note that Illumina, who are invested in Oxford Nanopore technology have rights to commercialize their "exonuclease sequencing" technology.  To my knowledge, the strand sequencing method uses a polymerase to move an intact strand of DNA through a nanopore, whilst the exonuclease removes dNTPs one at a time, for their passage through the pore.**

Not only will it be interesting to hear what stage the technology is at (and what has been sequenced) but how the relationship between the two companies and the two distinct technologies develop will no doubt generate some headlines also.

Clive recently posted ominously that "The days of short reads are numbered."

Are they?

Hopefully I'll find out in Florida!


**It is worth noting that startup company Genia claim their technology will electrically control the movement of the strand through the Nanopore