Portable sequencing and the MinION

1:11:15>> Okay. It was developed in uh UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz. Um, the fundamental research comes from David Demer who he started in UC Davis and then Santa Cruz poached him. He's like, "Yeah, I'll go I'll go live in Santa Cruz. It's kind of nice. >> Yeah, >> it's it's kind of nice. >> And I I really do think that this is um this is something that is Nobel Prizew worthy because it's it is now the foremost way of not just doing methylation but also just sequencing DNA right? >> In general, >> in general like this is now it's super fast because you go right and then and then have a computer just read the whole thing. Um and and these ultra long reads are just good >> regardless, >> right? For any number of contexts. We're we have a specific focus for this

1:11:56episode, but the applications >> the applications are endless. And and um Oxford Nanoport Technologies, they created something called a mini on sequencing device. It's like a tabletop sequencing device. So you can just like have it it it's not like the giant machines that you used to be. It's just a tabletop. Just stick your pipet in and then it'll just do the thingy. Is it analogous maybe to the sort of the phase shift from vacuum tubes to like desktop personal computer or desktop to mobile in the I would say like like uh yeah desktop to like laptop. >> Okay. Desktop to laptop. >> You know what I mean? The laptop I can now like go anywhere. >> I don't have to be plugged into a wall somewhere. >> Exactly. And things like that. Um and so I think it's it's a very big deal. And they actually took one to the

1:12:37International Space Station cuz they do like weird genetics experiments up there with like plants and like how they deal with microgravity and it makes sense, right? Like how does bacteria deal with microgravity? Cuz ultimately if you want to extend life to several years in space, you need to understand genet how like does the genetics at at the molecular biology level do they care? Probably they shouldn't because the gravitational potential difference between like one end of the cell and the other shouldn't be that much. But, you know, you never know with biology, right? You got to Yeah. Like, >> is the factory going to shut down? >> Yeah. Like, just because I took out like a tiny bit of wind effectively, right? That's like going in one direction. So, the ISS is using a mini ion sequencing

1:13:18device on it. >> That's really cool. >> Yeah. So, now finally with this, we can get to the paper at hand. An hour in, an hour into our episode, this is the paper