What is the sensitivity limit of the MinION/Yenos platform?

The MinION/Yenos platform achieves femtomolar (fM) detection sensitivity — approximately 10⁻¹⁵ mol/L or roughly 600 molecules per milliliter. This is sufficient to detect cancer-associated miRNA overexpression even from small Stage I tumors shedding relatively few exosomes into circulation. By comparison, conventional PCR can also detect femtomolar concentrations of nucleic acids but only after exponential amplification — with all the associated data spread. The nanopore platform achieves equivalent sensitivity with zero amplification. The bracketing protocol and 2,048 parallel pores ensure that enough molecular events are captured within a measurement window to produce statistically robust counts even at low concentrations.