Oxford Nanopore: we want to create the internet of living things

Michael Newington Gray

Oxford Nanopore Technologies wants to get your DNA online, and that future is closer than you think.

MinION, a £650 gene sequencer created by the company that plugs into USB ports, could soon be integrated into your mobile phone, CTO Clive Brown told the audience at WIRED Health 2015.

"Our big dream is  to move towards self-quantification, and we're going to make a version that works on handheld mobile phones. It can measure your blood markers and collate that data to track changes in your daily biology." The consumer behaviour patterns are already there today, he said, with people buying over-the-counter glucose monitors. "I think the wealth of information we can intercept can change the way people live."

Brown joined Oxford Nanopore in June 2008, having formerly worked at the UK's largest genomic laboratory, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He contributed to the development of more traditional DNA sequencers, huge machines that cost a great deal to run, require special equipment and are centrally located in labs. Nanopore sequencing, bypasses many of those problems.

Nanopores are tiny chips which sit on a silicon chip that can read what's happening in the hole, by reading the flow of ions through it, explained Brown. "As they move through the hole they generate an electronic signal characteristic of the DNA." This can be read from a solution, like blood, very quickly and deliver real time DNA scanning in near real time.

MinION, fitted with a array of tiny holes 1.5 nanometers across, is the outcome of this technology. "I first held MinION three years ago," said Brown. "It's a fun-size DNA sequencer, and there are thousands out there in early testing." Right now, MinION is in the hands of an Italian biologist hunting down frog species in jungles, it's being used to help prevent timber counterfeiting and in identifying the source of bacteria behind food outbreaks. Most recently, a team took it to Guinea, to sequence Ebola. It takes 15 minutes per patient, and the team in Guinea is using it to track how a particular strain has spread.

"You can run it anywhere on anything," said Brown, "and that opens it up to other applications. We can embed it in fridges or toothbrushes as it get smaller -- it can become a ubiquitous sensing apparatus."

He predicts it will make a huge impact in food production industries, homes, farms and much, much more. These applications will be helped along by Metrichor, a startup the company has launched to synch up data analytics tools with MinION outputs. He envisages Metrichor centres being setup in hospitals and homes, streaming things as they happen.

But it's in self-quantification that Brown sees the first commercial uses for MinION. If the product simply serves as a self-quantification tool, rather than offering diagnostics advice, it can be marketed direct to the consumer and bypass the medical approvals, he points out. WIRED Editor David Rowan probed Brown on the security issues that could arise from using a device like this to extract and stream genetic data, but Brown sees this as just another logistical concern the company and the DNA sequencing industry as a whole will overcome. "The same security concerns apply to your Fitbit, or location services on your mobile phone. These things already out there."

Source : - wired