We have Minions!

A couple of years ago, Oxford Nanopore made a big scientific splash when they announced they had developed a new DNA sequencing technology that would revolutionize genomics. Their MinION devices were the size of a USB stick, but were supposedly capable of sequencing long reads from single DNA molecules. After two years of wondering whether these devices were mythical, I can now tell you they actually exist. Together with Mike Gillings, we received five Minions in the mail today as part of a worldwide Oxford Nanopore beta test program. The big question now is- do they actually work?

Not mythical! Of course, we don't know yet whether they actually work

It is the size of a large USB stick. Thanks Mike for providing the skull of one of his students for scale.

I constructed Minionhenge on Mike's desk

Assemble the Minions!