This week, the Open Lab Days were held at the Medical University of Innsbruck. The idea behind the Open Lab Days is to give high school students insights into the study of molecular medicine.
Our institute (Stephan, Stefan and Sebastian) participated and showed the speed and portability of third-generation sequencing. Using Oxford Nanopore Sequencing, we sequenced a Metagenomics sample in real-time directly in the classroom and analyzed it using latest Data Science technologies.
What is Nanopore Sequencing?
Nanopore Sequencing is considered as third generation sequencing method. Here, nucleic acid molecules can directly be sequenced without prior amplification and virtually no technological limitation in read length (>50 kilobases!). In comparison, next generation sequencing (NGS) depends on amplification of small nucleic acid molecules (<500 bases read length).
How are we using Nanopore sequencing at our institute?
We use nanopore sequencing to investigate structural variants and complex regions in different genomes (human, mice, worms) and assess which mutations in the human genome are inherited together.