Tonight, I continued watching the session on the MinION Mk1D. The second speaker of the webinar was James Platt, the Director of Sequencing Platforms with Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT). They described the details of the MinION’s history. The Mk1D was rebuilt, including USB-C connectivity, Peltier module temperature control, and LED run status indicators. A comparison of the Mk1B and Mk1D highlighted the new connectivity of the device and the extended ambient temperature range. One feature and improvement I was curious about was also explained: the Mk1D has improved flow cell check time, now at 7.5 min instead of the 12 min for Mk1B or 10 min for the GridION. Temperature control is also key to sequencing at translocation speeds that are appropriate for the base calling model. Several examples of the use of the device for microbiology and infectious disease applications were listed. The accuracy of nanopopre-only metagenomics and bacterial assemblies was analyzed in a study by Ryan Wick. The Q score consensus accuracy average for several bacterial genomes in a metagenomic is 59.3. Currently, there is an Mk1D upgrade offer (as of November 2024), and there will be an adapter for the iPad Pro. This session had useful information about the new device and why upgrading is useful!
