The MinION nanopore sequencer, a device the size of a large USB memory stick, has been successfully used with Illumina HiSeq data to identify a previously uncharacterized insertion site of a chromosomal antibiotic resistance island (which is flanked by repetitive sequence and likely to have been horizontally transferred) in a strain of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhi. Nanopore technology can produce long sequence reads that are necessary for characterizing such complex repetitive sequence regions, and this proof-of-principle study demonstrates the potential of this technology for tracking the spread of bacterial pathogens and, ultimately, its future applicability in the clinic.
References
Ashton, P. M. et al. MinION nanopore sequencing identifies the position and structure of a bacterial antibiotic resistance island. Nature Biotech. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3103 (2014)
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Jones, B. Nanopore sequencing for clinical diagnostics. Nat Rev Genet 16, 68 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3895
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3895