Why does the MinION/Yenos platform have exactly 2,048 nanopores?

The MinION R9.4.1 flow cell contains 2,048 addressable nanopore channels arranged in a 512×4 array. Having 2,048 parallel nanopores means that 2,048 molecules can be simultaneously analyzed — dramatically increasing throughput and reducing the measurement time needed to count enough events for a statistically robust result. At any given moment, approximately 500–1,500 of the 2,048 pores may be actively recording (due to natural variation in pore status). The parallel architecture means that even at femtomolar miRNA concentrations, enough molecular transit events occur in a reasonable measurement window (typically several hours) to produce accurate quantification. This is one reason the MinION platform achieves femtomolar sensitivity without amplification.