Handheld DNA reader revolutionary and democratising, say scientists
Handheld DNA reader revolutionary and democratising, say
scientists
New palm-sized, MiniION sequencer, costing around $1,000,
designed to analyse DNA to help track disease outbreaks, check food and offer
‘the democratisation of sequencing’
Ian Sample Science editor Thursday 15 October 2015 09.43
EDT
An inexpensive handheld device that can read strands of
DNA has been hailed as revolutionary by scientists who tested the product.
The palm-sized sequencer gives researchers the power to
analyse DNA almost anywhere, and could help track disease outbreaks, run checks
on food, and combat the trafficking of endangered animals.
The gadget marks a major step towards what Mark Akeson, a
co-inventor at the University of California Santa Cruz, called “the
democratisation of sequencing”, where anyone can gather and process DNA samples
for themselves.
Scientists have scores of projects in mind, but some
future uses of the technology will inevitably be controversial. More advanced
versions of the DNA reader could, for example, be used to mimic tests in the
film Gattaca, where stands of hair are analysed to assess the genetic
suitability of potential space flight personnel from an elite group.
The MiniION DNA device resembles a large mobile phone.
Photograph: Nanopore Technologies
The 10cm-long, 90g device, named MinION by its British
developers, Oxford Nanopore, has already been used by some scientists. In
April, a team in Guinea read the genomes of 14 Ebola samples within 48 hours of
them being taken from patients. Early next year, astronauts are due to use
gadget to read DNA for the first time on the International Space Station.
“This is so revolutionary,” said David Buck at the Oxford
Genomics Centre. “If you’re a fan of Star Trek, you can think of it as getting
close to having a tricorder in your hand.”
In a report published on Thursday, an international team
of researchers, including Buck, describe a series of experiments that put
MinION through its paces. Though an earlier prototype suffered from technical
glitches, they found the latest version performed well.
The device is not designed to read very long genomes,
such as the 3bn letters that make up the instruction book for human life, nor
read them with the accuracy of one of the small car-sized machines found in
major genetics labs. But it can quickly identify bacteria and viruses from
their DNA, tell one strain from another, and spot different gene variants in
sections of human genetic code.
For now, the handheld reader is mostly in the hands of
academics. To prepare samples for analysis still takes two hours of lab work.
The material is then put into a flow cell on the device which detects
individual DNA bases as they pass through a tiny nanopore. To identify the
sequence, the MinION is plugged into a laptop that checks the DNA against a
database.
Scientists pay $1,000 (£650) for a MinION and an extra
$1000 for each new flow cell they need.
The advance means that scientists in the field will no
longer have to take samples from people, animals, or the environment, and send
them back to a lab to have the DNA read on machines that can take days to
return results. The faster turnaround time means, for example, that health
workers could know within minutes if a patient has Ebola, or a bird carries a
new strain of avian flu.
“The exciting thing about this technology is that it
simply hasn’t been possible to pack a DNA sequencer in your suitcase before
now,” said Camilla Ip, a co-author on the latest study at the Oxford Genomics
Centre.
Ip believes that people will soon be connecting MinIONs
to smartphones, and with Oxford Nanopore due to offer a pay-as-you-go pricing
model, that could transform access to genetic testing. “If anyone had the
ability to do DNA sequencing with a mobile phone with attachable DNA sequencer,
what could you do with it?” she said.
If that pans out, the possibilities are almost endless.
GPs could analyse patients’ breath to identify bacteria that are making them
ill. Health workers could use them to hunt for reservoirs of drug-resistant
microbes in hospitals. Animal hairs and skin could be analysed to catch
poachers and traffickers of endangered animals. Inspectors at fish markets
could verify what fish is being sold. In the water-cooling towers of office
buildings, you could install a device to scan for the bacteria that causes
Legionnaire’s disease.
But that is not all. “There will be undoubtedly be
Gattaca-style apps which, given a hair, will tell you the genetic compatibility
of a potential boy or girlfriend, although doing so is fraught with ethical
issues of data interpretation,” Ip said.
“In a few years’ time, people who may be several steps
removed from basic genomic research, like teachers in a classroom, could be
using this device to teach science in new, exciting ways that have never been
possible before,” she added.
Comments
Post a Comment