What is the MinION device?

The MinION is a portable nanopore sequencing device developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT). It is roughly the size of a large USB drive and connects to a laptop for data acquisition. Originally designed for DNA sequencing, the MinION contains a flow cell with 2,048 nanopore channels that can be read simultaneously. Yenos Analytical adapted the MinION hardware for a completely different application — single-molecule miRNA quantification using the Yenos osmium-tagging protocol. Rather than sequencing, the Yenos application uses the MinION's nanopore channels to count individual osmium-tagged miRNA molecules. The MinION is a commercially available research instrument; the patented Yenos protocol for miRNA quantification is what transforms it into a clinical assay platform.